IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 


Recently   Published. 


The  Value  of  Life.  A  Reply  to  WILLIAM  HURRELL  MAL- 
LOCK.  Octavo,  cloth,  $i  50.  This  reply  is  a  critical  review  of  Mr. 
Mallock's  volume  "  Is  Life  Worth  Living  ?  " 

"  In  elevation  of  tone,  sincerity  of  conviction  and  profoundness 
of  thought,  the  volume  appears  to  singular  advantage." — N.  Y. 
Tribune, 

"  A  brilliant  volume  *  *  *  full  of  keen  satire  and  witty  re- 
partee."— Boston  Post. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  182  FIFTH  AVENUE,  N.  V. 


StacK 
Annex 


Is  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 


BY 

WILLIAM  HUEEELL  MALLOCK 

ACTHOE  OF  '  THE  NEW  REPUBLIC*  ETC. 


'  Han  walketh  in  a  vain  shadow,  and  disqnieteth  himself  in  vain.' 

'  How  dieth  the  wise  man  ?    As  the  fool That  which  befalleth  the  sons 

of  men  befalleth  the  beasts,  even  one  thing  befalleth  them :  as  the  one  dieth  so 
dieth  the  other,  yea  they  have  all  one  breath  ;  so  that  man  hath  no  preeminence 
above  a  beast ;  for  all  is  vanity. 

'  TaAcu'ircupos  eyu>  ardpuiro;,  TI'S  fj.e  pv'Strat  IK  TOU  <7ai/iiaTOS  TOU  Oa.vo.TOV  TOUTOU  / 


NEW  YORK 
G.   P.   PUTNAM'S  SONS 

182  FIFTH  AVENUE 
1880 


StacK 
Annex 

SS 


I    INSCRIBE    THIS    BOOK 


TO 


JOHN    RUSKIN 


TO   JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

MY  DEAR  Mr.  KtrsKLN", — You  have  given  me  very  great 
pleasure  by  allowing  me  to  inscribe  this  book  to  you,  and  for 
two  reasons  ;  for.I  have  two  kinds  of  acknowledgment  that 
I  wish  to  make  to  you — first,  that  of  an  intellectual  debtor  to 
a  public  teacher  ;  secondly,  that  of  a  private  friend  to  the 
kindest  of  private  friends.  The  tribute  I  have  to  offer  you 
is,  it  is  true,  a  small  one  ;  and  it  is  possibly  more  blessed  for 
me  to  give  than  it  is  for  you  to  receive  it.  In  so  far,  at  least, 
as  I  represent  any  influence  of  yours,  you  may  very  possibly 
not  think  me  a  satisfactory  representative.  But  there  is  one 
fact — and  I  will  lay  all  the  stress  I  can  on  it — which  makes 
me  less  diffident  than  I  might  be,  in  offering  this  book  either 
to  you  or  to  the  Avorld  generally. 

The  import  of  the  book  is  independent  of  the  book  itself, 
and  of  the  author  of  it ;  nor  do  the  arguments  it  contains 
stand  or  fall  with  my  success  in  stating  them  ;  and  these 
last  at  least  I  may  associate  with  your  name.  They  are  not 
mine.  I  have  not  discovered  or  invented  them.  They  are 
so  obvious  that  any  one  who  chooses  may  see  them  ;  and  I 
have  been  only  moved  to  meddle  with  them,  because,  from 
being  so  obvious,  it  seems  that  no  one  will  so  much  as  deign 
to  look  at  them,  or  at  any  rate  to  put  them  together  with 
any  care  or  completeness.  They  might  be  before  even- 
body's  eyes ;  but  instead  they  are  under  everybody's  feet. 
My  occupation  has  been  merely  to  kneel  in  the  mud,  and  to 
pick  up  the  truths  that  are  being  trampled  into  it,  by  a  head- 
strong and  uneducated  generation. 

With  what  success  I  have  done  this,  it  is  not  for  me  to 

vii 


Viii  TO  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

judge.  But  though  I  cannot  he  confident  of  the  value  of 
what  I  have  done,  I  am  confident  enough  of  the  value  of 
what  I  have  tried  to  do.  From  a  literary  point  of  view- 
many  faults  may  be  found  with  me.  There  may  be  faults 
yet  deeper,  to  which  possibly  I  shall  have  to  plead  guilty. 
I  may — I  cannot  tell — have  unduly  emphasized  some  points, 
and  not  put  enough  emphasis  on  others.  I  may  be  con- 
victed— nothing  is  more  likely — of  many  verbal  inconsist- 
encies. But  let  the  arguments  I  have  done  my  best  to  em- 
body be  taken  as  a  whole,  and  they  have  a  vitality  that  does 
not  depend  upon  me ;  nor  can  they  be  proved  false,  because 
my  ignorance  or  weakness  may  here  or  there  have  associated 
them  with,  or  illustrated  them  by,  a  falsehood.  I  am  not 
myself  conscious  of  any  such  falsehoods  in  my  book  ;  but  if 
such  are  pointed  out  to  me,  I  shall  do  my  best  to  correct 
them.  If  what  I  have  done  prove  not  worth  correction, 
others  coming  after  me  will  be  preferred  before  me,  and  are 
sure  before  long  to  address  themselves  successfully  to  the 
same  task  in  which  I  perhaps  have  failed.  What  indeed  can 
we  each  of  us  look  for  but  a  large  measure  of  failure,  espe- 
cially when  we  are  moving  not  with  the  tide  but  against  it 
— when  the  things  we  wrestle  with  are  principalities  and 
powers,  and  spiritual  stupidity  in  high  places — and  when  we 
are  ourselves  partly  weakened  by  the  very  influences  against 
which  we  are  straggling  ? 

But  this  is  not  all.  There  is  in  the  way  another  diffi- 
culty. Writing  as  the  well-wishers  of  truth  and  goodness, 
we  find,  as  the  world  now  stands,  that  our  chief  foes  are  they 
of  our  own  household.  The  insolence,  the  ignorance,  and 
the  stupidity  of  the  age  has  embodied  itself,  and  found  its 
mouthpiece,  in  men  who  are  personally  the  negations  of  all 
that  they  represent  theoretically.  We  have  men  who  in 
private  are  full  of  the  most  gracious  modesty,  representing 
in  their  philosophies  the  most  ludicrous  arrogance  ;  we  have 


TO  JOHN  RUSKIN.  ix 

men  who  practise  every  virtue  themselves,  proclaiming  the 
principles  of  every  vice  to  others  ;  we  have  men  who  have 
mastered  many  kinds  of  knowledge,  acting  on  the  world  only 
as  embodiments  of  the  completest  and  most  pernicious  igno- 
rance. I  have  had  occasion  to  deal  continually  with  certain 
of  these  by  name.  With  the  exception  of  one — who  has  died 
prematurely,  whilst  this  book  was  in  the  press — those  I  have 
named  oftenest  are  still  living.  Many  of  them  probably  are 
known  to  you  personally,  though  none  of  them  are  so  known 
to  me ;  and  you  will  appreciate  the  sort  of  difficulty  I  have 
felt,  better  than  I  can  express  it.  I  can  only  hope  that  as 
the  falsehood  of  their  arguments  cannot  blind  any  of  us  to 
their  personal  merits,  so  no  intellectual  demerits  in  my  case 
will  be  prejudicial  to  the  truth  of  my  arguments. 

To  me  the  strange  thing  is  that  such  arguments  should 
have  to  be  used  all ;  and  perhaps  a  thing  stranger  still  that 
it  should  fall  to  me  to  use  them — to  me,  an  outsider  in 
philosophy,  in  literature,  and  in  theology.  But  the  justifi- 
cation of  my  speaking  is  that  there  is  any  opening  for  me  to 
speak ;  and  others  must  be  blamed,  not  I,  if 

the  lyre  so  long  divine 
Degenerates  into  hands  like  mine. 

At  any  rate,  however  all  this  may  be,  what  I  here  inscribe 
to  you,  my  friend  and  teacher,  I  am  confident  is  not  un- 
worthy of  you.  It  is  not  what  I  have  done ;  it  is  what  I 
have  tried  to  do.  As  such  I  beg  you  to  accept  it,  and  to 
believe  me  still,  though  now  so  seldom  near  you, 

Your  admiring  and  affectionate  friend, 

W.  H.  MALLOCK. 

P.S. — Much  of  the  substance  of  the  following  book  you 
have  seen  already,  in  two  Essays  of  mine  that  were  pub- 


x  TO  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

lished  in  the  '  Contemporary  Keview,'  and  in  five  Essays  that 
were  published  in  the  *  Nineteenth  Century.'  It  had  at  one 
time  been  my  intention,  by  the  kindness  of  the  respective 
Editors,  to  have  reprinted  these  Essays  in  their  original 
form.  But  there  was  so  much  to  add,  to  omit,  to  rearrange, 
and  to  join  together,  that  I  have  found  it  necessary  to  re- 
write nearly  the  whole ;  and  thus  you  will  find  the  present 
volume  virtually  new. 

TOBQUAY,  May,  1879, 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  NEW  IMPORT   OF  THE  QUESTION. 

PAGE 
The  question  may  seem  vague  and  useless  ;  but  if  we  consider  its 

real  meaning  we  shall  see  that  it  is  not  so 1 

In  the  present  day  it  has  acquired  a  new  importance 2 

Its  exact  meaning.     It  does  not  question  the  fact  of  human  happi- 
ness         3 

But  the  nature  of  happiness,  and  the  permanence  of  its  basis  ...       4 
For  what  we  call  the  higher  happiness  is  essentially  a  complex 

thing 5 

We  cannot  be  sure  that  all  its  elements  are  permanent 7 

Without  certain  of  its  elements  it  has  been  declared  by  the  wisest 

men  to  be  valueless 8 

And  it  is  precisely  the  elements  in  question  that  modern  thought 

is  eliminating 11 

It  is  contended  that  they  have  often  been  eliminated  before  ;  and 

that  yet  the  worth  of  life  has  not  suffered 13 

But  this  contention  is  entirely  false.     They  were  never  before 

eliminated  as  modern  thought  is  eliminating  them  now 17 

The  present  age  can  find  no  genuine  parallels  in  the  past 19 

Its  position  is  made  peculiar  by  three  facts 19 

Firstly,  by  the  existence  of  Christianity 19 

Secondly,   the  insignificance  to  which   science   has  reduced  the 

earth 23 

Thirdly,  the  intense  self-consciousness  that  has  been  developed 

in  the  modern  world  25 

It  is  often  said  that  a  parallel  to  our  present  case  is  to  be  found 

in  Buddhism '. 27 

But  this  is  absolutely  false.     Buddhist  positivism  is  the  exact 

reverse  of  Western  positivism 29 

In  short,  the  life-problem  of  our  day  is  distinctly  a  new  and  an  as 

yet  unanswered  one 31 

xi 


Xii  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  II. 

MOBALITT  AND  THE  PRIZE  OF  LIFE. 

PAGE 

The  worth  the  positive  school  claim  for  life,  is  essentially  a  moral 

worth 33 

As  its  most  celebrated  exponents  explicitly  tell  us 34 

This  means  that  life  contains  some  special  prize,  to  which  morality 

is  the  only  road ...    34 

And  the  value  of  life  depends  on  the  value  of  this  prize 35 

J.  8.  Mill,  G.  Eliot,  and  Professor  Huxley  admit  that  this  is  a  cor- 
rect way  of  stating  the  case 36 

But  all  this  language  as  it  stands  at  present  is  too  vague  to  be  of 

any  use  to  us 38 

The  prize  in  question  is  to  be  won  in  this  life,  if  anywhere  ;  and 

must  therefore  be  more  or  less  describable 39 

What  then  is  it  ? 40 

Unless  it  is  describable  it  cannot  be  a  moral  end  at  all 41 

As  a  consideration  of  the  raison  d'etre  of  all  moral  systems  will 

show  us 42 

The  value  of  the  prize  must  be  verifiable  by  positive  methods. ...  43 
And  be  verifiably  greater,  beyond  all  comparison,  than  that  of 

all  other  prizes 44 

Has  such  a  prize  any  real  existence  ?    This  is  our  question 44 

It  has  never  yet  been  answered  properly 45 

And  though  two  sets  of  answers  have  been  given  it,  neither  of 

them  are  satisfactory 45 

I  shall  deal  with  these  two  questions  in  order 47 


CHAPTER  III. 

SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OP  MORALITY. 

The  ]x>sitive  theory  is  that  the  health  of  the  social  organism  is 
the  real  foundation  of  morals 49 

But  social  health  is  nothing  but  the  personal  health  of  all  the 
members  of  the  society 51 

It  is  not  happiness  itself,  but  the  negative  conditions  that  make 

happiness  for  all 51 

Still  less  is  social  health  any  high  kind  of  happiness 54 

It  can  only  be  maintained  to  be  so,  by  supposing 55 


CONTENTS. 

PAOB 

Either,  that  all  kinds  of  happiness  are  equally  high  that  do  not 

interfere  with  others 55 

Or,  that  it  is  only  a  Myh  kind  of  happiness  that  can  be  shared 

by  a  1 1 56 

Both  of  which  suppositions  are  false 57 

The  conditions  of  social  health  are  a  moral  end  only  when  we 

each  feel  a  personal  delight  in  maintaining  them 58 

In  this  case  they  will  supply  us  with  a  small  portion  of  the  moral 

aid  needed 59 

But  this  case  is  not  a  possible  one 60 

There  is  indeed  the  natural  impulse  of  sympathy  that  might  tend 

to  make  it  so 61 

But  this  is  counterbalanced  by  the  corresponding  impulse  of  self- 
ishness       62 

And  this  impulse  of  sympathy  itself  is  of  very  limited  power 63 

Except  under  very  rare  conditions 63 

The  conditions  of  general  happiness  are  far  too  vague  to  do  more 

than  very  slightly  excite  it 64 

Or  give  it  power  enough  to  neutralise  any  personal  temptation. . .     66 

At  all  events  they  would  excite  no  enthusiasm 67 

For  this  purpose  there  must  be  some  prize  before  us,  of  recog- 
nised positive  value,  more  or  less  definite 67 

And  before  ail  things,  to  be  enjoyed  by  us  individually 67 

Unless  this  prize  be  of  great  value  to  begin  with,  its  value  will 

not  become  great  because  great  numbers  obtain  it 71 

Nor  until  we  know  what  it  is,  do  we  gain  anything  by  the  hope 

that  men  may  more  completely  make  it  their  own  in  the  future.     72 
The  modern  positive  school  requires  a  great  general  enthusiasm 

for  the  general  good 73 

They  therefore  presuppose  an  extreme  value  for  the  individual 

good 74 

Our  first  enquiry  must  be  therefore  what  the  higher  individual 
good  is 76 

CHAPTER  IV. 

GOODNESS  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD. 

What  has  been  said  in  the  last  chapter  is  really  admitted  by  the 

positive  school  themselves 77 


xiv  CONTENTS. 

TAOB 

As  we  can  learn  explicitly  from  George  Eliot 78 

In  Daniel  Deronda 78 

That  the  fundamental  moral  question  is,  'In  what  may  shall  the 

individual  make  life  pleasant  ?. . . 79 

And  the  right  way,  for  the  positivists,  as  for  the  Christians,  is  an 

inward  way 80 

The  moral  end  is  a  certain  inward  state  of  the  heart,  and  the  posi- 
tivists say  it  is  a  sufficient  attraction  in  itself,  without  any 

aid  from  religion 81 

And  they  support  this  view  hy  numerous  examples 82 

But  all  such  examples  are  useless 83 

Because  though  we  may  get  rid  of  religion  in  its  pure  form 83 

There  is  much  that  we  have  not  got  rid  of,  embodied  still  5n  the 

moral  end 84 

To  test  the  intrinsic  value  of  the  end,  we  must  sublimate  this  re- 
ligion out  of  it 86 

For  this  purpose  we  will  consider,  first,  the  three  general  charac- 
teristics of  the  moral  end,  viz 88 

Its  inwardness 88 

Its  importance 89 

And  its  absolute  character 91 

Now  all  these  three  characteristics  can  be  explained  by  religion. .  9;> 

And  cannot  be  explained  without  it 96 

The  positive  moral  end  must  therefore  be  completely  divested  of 

them 100 

The  next  question  is,  will  it  be  equally  attractive  then? 100 


CHAPTER  V. 

LOVE  AS  A  TEST  OP  GOODNESS. 

The  positivists'  represent  love  as  a  thing  whose  value  is  self-de- 
pendent..  101 

And  which  gives  to  life  a  positive  and  incalculable  worth 103 

But  this  is  supposed  to  be  true  of  one  form  of  love  only 104 

And  the  very  opposite  is  supposed  to  hold  good  of  all  other  forms .   105 
The  right  form  depends  on  the  conformity  of  each  of  the  lovers 

to  a  certain  inward  standard 105 

As  we  can  see  exemplified  in  the  case  of  Othello  and  Desdemona, 
etc .107 


CONTENTS.  XV 

PAGE 

The  kind  and  not  the  degree  of  the  love  is  what  gives  love  its 

special  val  ue 108 

And  the  selection  of  this  kind  can  be  neither  made  nor  justified 

on  positive  principles 109 

As  the  following  quotations  from  Theophile  Gautier  will  show  us.  110 
Which  are  supposed  by  many  to  embody  the  true  view  of  love. . .  110 
According  to  this  view,  purity  is  simply  a  disease  both  in  man 

and  woman,  or  at  any  rate  no  merit 116 

If  love  is  to  be  a  moral  end,  this  view  must  be  absolutely  con- 
demned   117 

But  positivism  cannot  condemn  it.  or  support  the  opposite  view. .  117 

As  we  shall  see  by  recurring  to  Professor  Huxley's  argument 118 

Which  will  show  us  that  all  moral  language  as  applied  to  love  is 

either  distinctly  religious  or  else  altogether  ludicrous 122 

For  it  is  clearly  only  on   moral  grounds  that  we  can  give  that 
blame  to  vice,  which  is  the  measure  of  the  praise  we  give  to 

virtue 123 

The  misery  of  the  former  depends  on  religious  anticipations 124 

And  so  does  also  the  blessedness  of  the  latter 125 

As  we  can  see  in  numerous  literary  expressions  of  it 126 

Positivism,  by  destroying  these  anticipations,  changes  the  whole 

character  of  the  love  in  question 128 

And  prevents  love  from  supplying  us  with,  any  moral  standard. . .  131 
The  loss  sustained  by  love  will  indicate  the  general  loss  sustained 
by  life 131 


CHAPTER  VI. 

LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  KEWARD. 

We  must  now  examine  what  will  be  the  practical  result  on  life 

in  general  of  the  loss  just  indicated 132 

To  do  this,  we  will  take  life  as  reflected  in  the  mirror  of  the  great 

dramatic  art  of  the  world 134 

And  this  will  show  us  how  the  moral  judgment  is  the  chief  faculty 

to  which  all  that  is  great  or  intense  in  this  art  appeals. ....  136 

We  shall  see  this,  for  instance,  in  Macbeth 137 

In  Hamlet 137 

In  Antigone 137 

In  Measure  for  Measure,  and  in  Faust 138 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

And  also  in  degraded  art  just  as  well  as  in  sublime  art 139 

In  profligate  and  cynical  art,  such  as  Congreve's 140 

And  in  concupiscent  art 141 

Such  as  Madtmoisette  de  Maupin 141 

Or  such   works   as   that   of  Meursius,   or  the   worst  scenes  in 

Petronius 143 

The  supernatural  moral  judgment  is  the  chief  thing  everywhere.   14:> 
Take  away  this  judgment,  and  art  loses  all  its  strange  interest. .  .   144 

And  so  will  it  be  with  life 145 

The  moral  landscape  will  be  ruined 145 

Even  the  mere  sensuous  joy  of  living  in  health  will  grow  duller. .   146 
Nor  will  culture  be  of  the  least  avail  without  the  supernatural 

moral  element 148 

Nor  will  the  devotion  to  truth  for  its  own  sake,  which  is  the  last 

refuge  of  the  positivists  when  in  despair 149 

For  this  last  has  no  meaning  whatever,  except  as  a  form  of  con- 
crete theism 152 

The  reverence  for  Nature  is  but  another  form  of  the  devotion  to 

truth,  and  its  only  possible  meaning  is  equally  theistic 157 

Thus  all  the  higher  resources  of  positivism  fail  together 161 

And  the  highest  positive  value  of  life  would  be  something  less 
than  its  present  value 161 

CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  SUPERSTITION  OP  POSITIVISM. 

From  what  we  have  just  seen,  the  visionary  character  of  the  posi- 

tivist  conception  of  progress  becomes  evident 163 

Its  object  is  far  more  plainly  an  illusion  than  the  Christian 

heaven 164 

All  the  objections  urged  against  the  latter  apply  with  far  more 

force  to  the  former 165 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  no  possible  object  sufficient  to  start 

the  enthusiasm  required  by  the  positivists 167 

To  make  the  required  enthusiasm  possible  human  nature  would 

have  to  be  completely  changed 168 

Two  existing  qualities,  for  instance,  would  have  to  be  magnified 

to  an  impossible  extent — imagination 169 

And  unselfishness 170 


CONTENTS.  xvii 

PACK 

If  we  state  the  positive  system  in  terms  of  common  life,  its  vision- 
ary character  becomes  evident 172 

The  examples  which  have  suggested  its  possibility  are  quite  mis- 
leading   173 

The  positive  system  is  really  far  more  based  on  superstition  than 
any  religion 175 

Its  appearance  can  only  be  accounted  for  by  the  characters  and 

circumstances  of  its  originators 175 

And  a  consideration  of  these  will  help  us  more  than  anything  to 

estimate  it  rightly 178 

And  will  let  us  see  that  its  only  practical  tendency  is  to  deaden 
all  our  present  interests,  not  to  create  any  new  ones 179 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE   PRACTICAL  PROSPECT. 

It  is  not  contended  that  the  prospect  just  described  will,  as  a  fact, 

ever  be  realised . . ' 183 

But  only  that  it  will  be  realised  if  certain  other  prospects  are 

realised 185 

Which  prospects  may  or  may  not  be  visionary 186 

But  the  progress  towards  which  is  already  begun 187 

And  also  the  other  results,  that  have  been  described  already.. : .  .  187 
Positive  principles  have  already  produced  a  moral  deterioration, 

even  in  places  where  we  should  least  imagine  it 187 

As  we  shall  see  if  we  pierce  beneath  the  surface 189 

In  the  curious  condition  of  men  who  have  lost  faith,  but  have 

retained  the  love  of  virtue 189 

The  struggle  was  hard,  when  they  had  all  the  helps  of  religion. .  190 

It  is  harder  now 190 

Conscience  still  survives,  but  it  has  lost  its  restraining  power. . . .  191 

Temptation  almost  inevitably  dethrones  it 193 

And  its  full  prestige  can  never  be  recovered ...  193 

It  can  do  nothing  but  deplore  ;  it  cannot  remedy 194 

In  such  cases  the  mind's  decadence  has  begun  ;  and  its  symptoms 

are 194 

Self  reproach 195 

Li  f  e-weariness 195 

And  indifference 195 

B 


xviii  CONTENTS. 

PAG* 

The  class  of  men  to  whom  this  applies  is  increasing,  and  they  are 
the  true  representatives  of  the  work  of  positive  thought. .  .  196 

It  is  hard  to  realise  this  ominous  fact 197 

But  by  looking  steadily  and  dispassionately  at  the  characteristics 

of  the  present  epoch  we  may  learn  to  do  so 198 

We  shall  see  that  the  opinions  now  forming  will  have  a  weight 

and  power  that  no  opinions  ever  had  before 199 

And  their  tendency,  as  yet  latent,  towards  pessimism  is  therefore 

most  momentous 

If  it  is  to  be  cured,  it  must  be  faced 

It  takes  the  fonn  of  a  suppressed  longing  for  the  religious  faith 

that  is  lost 200 

And  this  longing  is  wide-spread,  though  only  expressed  indirectly.  201 

It  is  felt  even  by  men  of  science 202 

But  the  longing  seems  fruitless .• . . .  % 203 

This  dejection  is  in  fact  shared  by  the  believers 203 ' 

And  is  even  authoritatively  recognised  by  Catholicism 204 

The  great  question  for  the  world  now,  and  the  one  on  which  its 
whole  future  depends,  is,  will  the  lost  faith  ever  be  re- 
covered?  205 

The  answer  to  this  will  probably  have  to  be  decisive,  one  way  or 
the  other 206 

CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  LOGIC  OP  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATIOK. 

What  gives  the  denials  of  positivism  their  general  weight,  is  the 

impression  that  they  represent  reason 208 

They  are  supported  by  three  kinds  of  arguments  :  physical,  moral, 

and  historical 209 

The  two  first  bear  upon  all  religion  ;  the  latter  only  on  special  rev- 
elations.   210 

Natural  religion  is  the  belief  in  God,  immortality,  and  the  possi- 
bility of  miracles  generally 210 

Physical  science  prefers  to  destroy  natural  religion  by  its  connec- 
tion of  mind  with  matter 210 

1st.  Making  conscious  life  a  function  of  the  brain.  2nd.  Evolving 
the  living  organisms  from  lifeless  matter.  3rd.  Making  this 
material  evolution  automatic .  210 


CONTENTS. 


XIX 


PAGE 

Thus  all  external  proofs  of  God  are  destroyed 212 

And  also  of  the  soul's  immortality 213 

External  proof  is  declared  to  be  the  test  of  reality 213 

And  theiefore  all  religion  is  set  down  as  a  dream 215 

But  we  believe  that  proof  is  the  test  of  reality,  not  because  it  is 
proved  to  be  so,  but  because  of  the  authority  of  those  who 

tell  us  so 215 

But  it  will  be  found  that  these  men  do  not  understand  their  own 

principle 216 

And,  that  in  what  they  consider  their  most  important  conclusions 

they  emphatically  disregard  it 217 

One  or  other,  therefore,  of  their  opinions  is  worthless — their  de- 
nial of  religion  or  their  affirmation  of  morality 219 

But  we  shall  see  this  more  clearly  in  considering  the  question  of 

consciousness  and  will 220 

We  shall  see  that,  as  far  as  science  can  inform  us,  man  is  nothing 

but  an  automaton 220 

But  the  positive  school  are  afraid  to  admit  this 221 

And  not  daring  to  meet  the  question,  they  make  a  desperate  effort 

to  confuse  it 222 

Two  problems  are  involved   in   the  matter :  1st.  How  is  brain 

action  connected  with  consciousness 223 

2nd.  Is  the  consciousness   that  is  connected  with  it  something 

separable  from,  and  independent  of  it 223 

The  first  of  these  problems  has  no  bearing  at  all  on  any  moral 
or  religious  question.     It  is  insoluble.     It  leaves  us  not  in 

doubt  but  in  ignorance 224 

The  doubt,  and  the  religious  question  is  connected  solely  with 

the  second  problem 228 

To  which  there  are  two  alternative  solutions 228 

And  modern  science  is  so  confused  that  it  will  accept  neither 228 

As  Dr.  Tyndall's  treatment  of  the  subject  very  forcibly  shows  us.  230 
And  Dr.  Tyndall  in  this  way  is  a  perfect  representative  of  the 

whole  modern  positive  school 231 

Let  us  compare  the  molecules  of  the  brain  to  the  six  moving  bil- 
liard-balls      231 

The  question  is,  are  these  movements  due  to  the  stroke  of  one 

cue  or  of  two '. 233 

The  positive  school  profess  to  answer  this  question  both  ways. . .  234 
But  this  profession  is  nonsense 2C6 


XX  CONTENTS. 

PACK 

What  they  really  mean  is,  1st.  That  the  connection  of  conscious- 
ness with  matter  is  a  mystery  ;  as  to  that  they  can  give  no 
answer.  2nd.  That  as  to  whether  consciousness  is  wholly  a 
material  thing  or  no,  they  witt  give  no  answer 237 

But  why  are  they  in  this  state  of  suspense  ? 238 

Though  their  system  does  not  in  the  least  require  the  hypothesis 

of  an  immaterial  element  in  consciousness 239 

They  see  that  the  moral  value  of  life  does 239 

The  same  reasons  that  will  warrant  their  saying  it  may  exist, 

will  constrain  them  to  say  it  must 240 

Physical  science,  with  its  proofs,  can  say  nothing  in  the  matter, 

either  as  to  will,  immortality,  or  God 242 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  will  force  us,  if  we  believe  in  will,  to 
admit  the  reality  of  miracles 243 

So  far  as  science  goes,  morality  and  religion  are  both  on  the  same 
footing 243 

CHAPTER  X. 

MORALITY  AND  NATURAL  THEISM. 

Supposing  science  not  to  be  inconsistent  with  theism,  may  not 

theism  be  inconsistent  with  morality  ? 247 

It  seems  to  be  so  ;  but  it  is  no  more  so  than  is  morality  with  itself. 
Two  difficulties  common  to  both  : — 1st.  The  existence  of 

evil  ;  2nd.   Man's  free  will  and  God's  free  will 248 

James  Mill's  statement  of  the  case  represents  the  popular  anti-re- 
ligious arguments 249 

But  his  way  of  putting  the  case  is  full  of  distortion  and  exaggera- 
tion  250 

Though  certain  of  the  difficulties  he  pointed  out  were  real 231 

And  those  we  cannot  explain  away  ;  but  if  we  are  to  believe  in 

our  moral  being  at  all,  we  must  one  and  all  accept 252 

We  can  escape  from  them  by  none  of  the  rationalistic  substitutes 

for  religion  252 

A  similar  difficulty  is  the  freedom  of  the  will 257 

This  belief  is  an  intellectual  impossibility 258 

But  at  the  same  time  a  moral  necessity 260 

It  is  typical  of  all  the  difficulties  attendant  on  an  assent  to  our 

own  moral  nature 260 

The  vaguer  difficulties  that  appeal  to  the  moral  imagination  we 
must  meet  in  the  same  way 261 


CONTENTS.  Xxi 

CHAPTER  XI. 

THE  HUMAN   KACE  AKD  REVELATION. 

PAGE 

Should  the  intellect  of  the  world  return  to  theism,  will  it  ever 

again  acknowledge  a  special  revelation  ? 264 

We  can  see  that  this  is  an  urgent  question 265 

By  many  general  considerations 26-1 

Especially  the  career  of  Protestantism 267 

Which  is  visibly  evaporating  into  a  mere  natural  theism 268 

And,  as  such,  is  losing  all  restraining  power  in  the  world 271 

Where  then  shall  we  look  for  a  revelation  ?    Not  in  any  of  the 

Eastern  creeds 275 

The  claims  of  the  Roman  Church  are  the  only  ones  worth  consid- 
ering   276 

Her  position  is  absolutely  distinct  from  that  of  Protestantism, 

and  she  is  not  involved  in  its  fall 277 

In  theory  she  is  all  that  the  enlightened  world  could  require 279 

The  only  question  is,  is  she  so  in  practice?  This  brings  us  to  diffi- 
culties     . .  282 

1st.  The  partial  success  of  her  revelation  ;  and  her  supposed  con- 
demnation of  the   virtues  of  unbelievers.     But  her  partial 

success  is  simply  the  old  mystery  of  evil ,   ...  282 

And  through  her  infinite  charity,  she  does  nothing  to  increase 

that  difficulty 283 

The  value  of  orthodoxy  is  analogous  to  the  value  of  true  physical 

science 285 

All  should  try  to  learn  the  truth  who  can  ;  but  we  do  not  con- 
demn others  who  cannot 286 

Even  amongst  Catholics  generally  no  recondite  theological  know  1- 

edge  is  required 287 

The  facts  of  the  Catholic  religion  are  simple.     Theology  is  the 

complex  scientific  explanation  of  them 288 

Catholicism  is  misunderstood  because  the  outside  world  confuses 

with  its  religion — 1st.  The  complex  explanations  of  it 289 

2nd.  Matters  of  discipline,  and  practical  rules 290 

3rd.  The  pious  opinions,  or  the  scientific  errors  of  private  per- 
sons, or  particular  epochs 291 

None  of  which  really  are  any  integral  part  of  the  Church 293 

Neither  are  the  peculiar  exaggerations  of  moral  feeling  that  have 

been  prevalent  at  different  times 293 

The   Church   theoretically  is   a   living,    growing,   self-adapting 

organism 295 


xxii  CONTENTS. 

PAOB 

She  is,  in  fact,  the  growing,  moral  sense  of  mankind  organised 
and  developed  under  a  supernatural  tutelage 295 

CHAPTER  XII. 

UNIVERSAL  HISTORY  AND  THE  CLAIMS  OP  THE  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH. 

We  must  now  consider  the  Church  in  relation  to  history  and  ex- 
ternal historical  criticism 297 

1st.  The  history  of  Christianity  ;  2nd.  The  history  of  other  relig- 
ions  298 

Criticism  has  robbed  the  Bible  of  nearly  all  the  supposed  inter- 
nal evidences  of  its  supernatural  character 298 

It  has  traced  the  chief  Christian  dogmas  to  non-Christian  sources.  300 

It  has  shown  that  the  histories  of  other  religions  are  strangely 

analogous  to  the  history  of  Christianity 300 

And  to  Protestantism  these  discoveries  are  fatal 302 

But  they  are  not  fatal  to  Catholicism,  whose  attitude  to  history  is 
made  utterly  different  by  the  doctrine  of  the  perpetual  infal- 
libility of  the  Church 303 

The  Catholic  (Church  teaches  us  to  believe  the  Bible  for  her  sake, 

not  her  for  the  Bible's 305 

And  even  though  her  dogmas  may  have  existed  in  some  form 
elsewhere,  they  become  new  revelations  to  us,  by  her  super- 
natural selection  of  them 306 

The  Church  is  a  living  organism,  for  ever  selecting  and  assimi- 
lating fresh  nutriment 307 

Even  from  amongst  the  wisdom  of  her  bitterest  enemies 309 

All  false  revelations,  in  so  far  as  they  have  professed  to  be  infal- 
lible, are,  from  the  Catholic  standpoint,  abortive  Catholicisms.  311 

Catholicism  has  succeeded  in  the  same  attempt  in  which  they 
have  failed 313 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

BELIEF  AND  WILL. 

The  aim  of  this  book 315 

Has  been  to  clear  the  great  question  as  to  man's  nature,  and  the 
proper  way  of  regarding  him,  from  the  confusion  at  present 

surrounding  it 317 

And  to  show  that  the  answer  will  finally  rest,  not  on  outer  evi- 
dence, but  on  himself,  and  on  his  own  irill,  if  he  have  a  will.  319 


NOTE. 

IN  this  book  the  words  'positive,''  'positivist,'  and  'posi- 
tivism '  are  of  constant  occurrence  as  applied  to  modern 
thought  and  thinkers.  To  avoid  any  chance  of  confusion  or 
misconception,  it  will  be  well  to  say  that  these  words  as  used 
by  me  have  no  special  reference  to  the  system  of  Comte  or 
his  disciples,  but  are  applied  to  the  common  views  and  posi- 
tion of  the  whole  scientific  school,  one  of  the  most  eminent 
members  of  which — I  mean  Professor  Huxley — has  been  the 
most  trenchant  and  contemptuous  critic  that  'positivism  '  in 
its  narrower  sense  has  met  with.  Over  *  positivism  '  in  this 
sense  Professor  Huxley  and  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  have  had 
some  public  battles.  Positivism  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is 
used  by  me,  applies  to  the  principles  as  to  which  the  above 
writers  explicitly  agree,  not  to  those  as  to  which  they  differ. 

W.  H.  M. 


Is  LIFE  WOBTH  LIVING? 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  NEW  IMPORT   OF  THE   QUESTION. 

A  change  icas  coming  over  the  world,  the  meaning  and  direction  of 
w'n'e/t  even  still  is  hidden  from  us,  a  change  from  era  to  era, — Froude's 
H'-story  of  England,  ch.  i. 

WHAT  I  am  about  to  deal  with  in  this  book  is  a 
question  which  may  well  strike  many,  at  first  sight, 
as  a  question  that  has  no  serious  meaning,  or  none 
at  any  rate  for  the  sane  and  healthy  mind.  I  am 
about  to  attempt  inquiring,  not  sentimentally,  but 
with  all  calmness  and  sobriety,  into  the  true  value  of 
this  human  life  of  ours,  as  tried  by  those  tests  of 
reality  which  the  modern  world  is  accepting,  and  to 
ask  dispassionately  if  it  be  really  worth  the  living. 
The  inquiry  certainly  has  often  been  made  before  ; 
but  it  has  never  been  made  properly ;  it  has  never 
been  made  in  the  true  scientific  spirit.  It  has  always 
been  vitiated  either  by  diffidence  or  by  personal 
feeling  ;  and  the  positive  school,  though  they  rejoice 
to  question  everything  else,  have,  at  least  in  this 

1 


2  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

country,  left  the  worth  of  life  alone.  They  may  now 
and  then,  perhaps,  have  affected  to  examine  it ;  but 
their  examination  has  been  merely  formal,  like  that 
of  a  custom-house  officer,  who  passes  a  portmanteau 
which  he  has  only  opened.  They  have  been  as  ten- 
der with  it  as  Don  Quixote  was  with  his  mended 
helmet,  when  he  would  not  put  his  card-paper  vizor 
to  the  test  of  the  steel  sword.  I  propose  to  supply 
this  deficiency  in  their  investigations.  I  propose  to 
apply  exact  thought  to  the  only  great  subject  to 
which  it  has  not  been  applied  already. 

To  numbers,  as  I  have  just  said,  this  will  of  course 
seem  useless.  They  will  think  that  the  question 
never  really  was  an  open  one ;  or  that,  if  it  ever 
were  so,  the  common  sense  of  mankind  has  long  ago 
finally  settled  it.  To  ask  it  again,  they  will  think 
idle,  or  worse  than  idle.  It  will  express  to  them,  if 
it  expresses  anything,  no  perplexity  of  the  intellect, 
but  merely  some  vague  disease  of  the  feelings. 
They  will  say  that  it  is  but  the  old  ejaculation  of 
satiety  or  despair,  as  old  as  human  nature  itself ;  it 
is  a  kind  of  maundering  common  to  all  moral  dys- 
pepsia; they  have  often  heard  it  before,  and  they 
wish  they  may  never  hear  it  again. 

But  let  them  be  a  little  less  impatient.  Let  them 
look  at  the  question  closer,  and  more  calmly  ;  and  it 
will  not  be  long  before  its  import  begins  to  change 
for  them.  They  will  see  that  though  it  may  have 


THE  NEW  IMPORT  OF  TUB  QUESTION.  3 

often  been  asked  idly,  it  is  yet  capable  of  a  meaning 
that  is  very  far  from  idle  ;  and  that  however  old  they 
may  think  it,  yet  as  asked  by  our  generation  it  is 
really  completely  new — that  it  bears  a  meaning 
which  is  indeed  not  far  from  any  one  of  them,  but 
which  is  practical  and  pressing — I  might  almost  say 
portentous — and  which  is  something  literally  unex- 
ampled in  the  past  history  of  mankind. 

I  am  aware  that  this  position  is  not  only  not  at 
first  sight  obvious,  but  that,  even  when  better  under- 
stood, it  will  probably  be  called  false.  My  first 
care,  therefore,  will  be  to  explain  it  at  length,  and 
clearly.  For  this  purpose  we  must  consider  two 
points  in  order;  first,  what  is  the  exact  doubt  we 
intend  to  express  by  our  question ;  and  next,  why 
in  our  day  this  doubt  should  have  such  a  special 
and  fresh  significance. 

Let  us  then  make  it  quite  plain,  at  starting,  that 

when  we  ask   '  Is  life  worth  living  I '   we  are  not 

i 

asking  whether  its  balance  of  pains  is  necessarily  and 
always  in  excess  of,  its  balance  of  pleasures.  We 
are  not  asking  whether  any  one  has  been,  or  whether 
any  one  is  happy.  To  the  unjaundiced  eye  nothing 
is  more  clear  than  that  happiness  of  various  kinds 
has  been,  and  is,  continually  attained  by  men.  And 
ingenious  pessimists  do  but  waste  their  labour  when 
they  try  to  convince  a  happy  man  that  he  really 
must  be  miserable.  What  I  am  going  to  discuss  is 


4  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

not  the  superfluous  truism  that  life  has  been  found 
worth  living  by  many  ;  but  the  profoundly  different 
proposition  that  it  ought  to  be  found  worth  living  by 
all.  For  this  is  what  life  is  pronounced  to  be,  when 
those  claims  are  made  for  it  that  at  present  univer- 
sally are  made ;  when,  as  a  general  truth,  it  is  said 
to  be  worth  living ;  or  when  any  of  those  august 
epithets  are  applied  to  it  that  are  at  present  applied 
so  constantly.  At  present,  as  we  all  know,  it  is 
called  sacred,  solemn,  earnest,  significant,  and  so 
forth.  To  withhold  such  epithets  is  considered  a 
kind  of  blasphemy.  And  the  meaning  of  all  such 
language  is  this :  it  means  that  life  has  some  deep 
inherent  worth  of  its  own,  beyond  what  it  can  acquire 
or  lose  by  the  caprice  of  circumstance — a  worth, 
which  though  it  may  be  most  fully  revealed  to  a 
man,  through  certain  forms  of  success,  is  yet  not  de- 
stroyed or  made  a  minus  quantity  by  failure.  Cer- 
tain forms  of  love,  for  instance,  are  held  in  a  special 
way  to  reveal  this  worth  to  us ;  but  the  worth  that 
a  successful  love  is  thus  supposed  to  reveal  is  a  worth 
that  a  hopeless  love  is  supposed  not  to  destroy. 
The  worth  is  a  part  of  life's  essence,  not  a  mere 
chance  accident,  as  health  or  riches  are  ;  and  we  are 
supposed  to  lose  it  by  no  acts  but  our  own. 

Now  it  is  evident  that  such  a  worth  as  this,  is,  in 
one  sense,  no  mere  fancy.  Numbers  actually  have 
found  it ;  and  numbers  actually  still  continue  to  find 


THE  NEW  IMPORT  OF  THE  QUESTION.  5 

it.  The  question  is  not  whether  the  worth  exists, 
but  on  what  is  the  worth  based.  How  far  is  the 
treasure  incorruptible  ;  and  how  far  will  our  increas- 
ing knowledge  act  as  moth  and  rust  to  it  ?  There 
are  some  things  whose  value  is  completely  estab- 
lished by  the  mere  fact  that  men  do  value  them. 
They  appeal  to  single  tastes,  they  defy  further  anal- 
ysis, and  they  thus  form,  as  it  were,  the  bases  of  all 
pleasures  and  happiness.  But  these  are  few  in  num- 
ber ;  they  are  hardly  ever  met  with  in  a  perfectly 
pure  state  ;  and  their  effect,  when  they  are  so  met,  is 
either  momentary,  or  far  from  vivid.  As  a  rule  they 
are  found  in  combinations  of  great  complexity,  fused 
into  an  infinity  of  new  substances  by  the  action  of 
beliefs  and  associations ;  and  these  two  agents  are 
often  of  more  importance  in  the  result  than  are  the 
things  they  act  upon.  Take  for  instance  a  boy  at 
Eton  or  Oxford,  who  affects  a  taste  in  wine.  Give 
him  a  bottle  of  gooseberry  champagne  ;  tell  him  it  is 
of  the  finest  brand,  and  that  it  cost  two  hundred 
shillings  a  dozen.  He  will  sniff,  and  wink  at  it  in 
ecstasy  ;  he  will  sip  it  slowly  with  an  air  of  knowing 
reverence  ;  and  his  enjoyment  of  it  probably  will  be 
far  keener,  than  it  would  be,  were  the  wine  really  all 
he  fancies  it,  and  he  had  lived  years  enough  to  have 
come  to  discern  its  qualities.  Here  the  part  played 
by  belief  and  associations  is  of  course  evident.  The 
boy's  enjoyment  is  real,  and  it  rests  to  a  certain  ex- 


6  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

tent  on  a  foundation  of  solid  fact ;  the  taste  of  the 
gooseberry  champagne  is  an  actual  pleasure  to  his 
palate.  Anything  nauseous,  black  dose  for  instance, 
could  never  raise  him  to  the  state  of  delight  in 
question.  But  this  simple  pleasure  of  sense  is  but  a 
small  part  of  the  pleasure  he  actually  experiences. 
That  pleasure,  as  a  whole,  is  a  highly  complex  thing, 
and  rests  mainly  on  a  basis  that,  by  a  little  knowl- 
edge, could  be  annihilated  in  a  moment.  Tell  the 
boy  what  the  champagne  really  is,  he  has  been 
praising ;  and  the  state  of  his  mind  and  face  will 
undergo  a  curious  transformation.  Our  sense  of  the 
worth  of  life  is  similar  in  its  complexity  to  the  boy's 
sense  of  the  worth  of  his  wine.  Beliefs  and  associations 
play  exactly  the  same  part  in  it.  The  beliefs  in  this 
last  case  may  of  course  be  truer.  The  question  that 
I  have  to  ask  is,  are  they  ?  In  some  individual  cases 
certainly,  they  have  not  been.  Miss  Harriet  Marti- 
neau,  for  instance,  judging  life  from  her  own  expe- 
rience of  it,  was  quite  persuaded  that  it  was  a  most 
solemn  and  satisfactory  thing,  and  she  has  told  the 
world  as  much,  in  no  hesitating  manner.  But  a  part 
at  least  of  the  solemn  satisfaction  she  felt  in  it  was 
due  to  a  grotesque  over-estimate  of  her  own  social 
and  intellectual  importance.  Here,  then,  was  a 
worth  in  life,  real  enough  to  the  person  who  found 
it,  but  which  a  little  knowledge  of  the  world  would 
have  at  once  taken  away  from  her.  Does  the  gen- 


THE  NEW  IMPORT  OF  THE  QUESTION.  7 

eral  reverence  with,  which  life  is  at  present  regarded 
rest  in  any  degree  upon  any  similar  misconception  \ 
And  if  so,  to  what  extent  does  it  ?  Will  it  fall  to 
pieces  before  the  breath  of  a  larger  knowledge  ?  or 
has  it  that  firm  foundation  in  fact  that  will  enable  it 
to  survive  in  spite  of  all  enlightenment,  and  perhaps 
even  to  increase  in  consequence  of  it  ? 

Such  is  the  outline  of  the  question  I  propose  to 
deal  with.  I  will  now  show  why  it  is  so  pressing, 
and  why,  in  the  present  crisis  of  thought,  it  is  so 
needful  that  it  should  be  dealt  with.  The  first  im- 
pression it  produces,  as  I  have  said,  is  that  it  is 
superfluous.  Our  belief  in  life  seems  to  rest  on  too 
wide  an  experience  for  us  to  entertain  any  genuine 
doubt  of  the  truth  of  it.  But  this  first  impression 
does  not  go  for  much.  It  is  a  mere  superficial  thing, 
and  will  wear  off  immediately.  We  have  but  to 
remember  that  a  belief  that  was  supposed  to  rest  on 
an  equally  wide  basis — the  belief  in  God,  and  in  a 
supernatural  order — has  in  these  days,  not  been 
questioned  only,  but  has  been  to  a  great  degree, 
successfully  annihilated.  The  only  philosophy  that 
belongs  to  the  present  age,  the  only  philosophy  that 
is  a  really  new  agent  in  progress,  has  declared  this 
belief  to  be  a  dissolving  dream  of  the  past.  And 
this  belief,  as  we  shall  see  presently,  is,  amongst 
civilized  men  at  least,  far  older  than  the  belief  in 
life ;  it  has  been  far  more  widely  spread,  and  expe- 


8  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  t 

rience  has  been  held  to  confirm  it  with  an  equal  cer- 
tainty. If  this  then  is  inevitably  disintegrated  by 
the  action  of  a  widening  knowledge,  it  cannot  be 
taken  for  granted  that  the  belief  in  life  will  not  fare 
likewise.  It  may  do  so ;  but  until  we  have  ex- 
amined it  more  closely  we  cannot  be  certain  that  it 
will.  Common  consent  and  experience,  until  they 
are  analysed,  are  fallacious  tests  for  the  seekers  after 
positive  truth.  The  emotions  may  forbid  us  to  ask 
our  question ;  but  in  modern  philosophy  the  emo- 
tions play  no  part  as  organs  of  discovery.  They 
are  facts  in  themselves,  and  as  such  are  of  course 
of  value  ;  but  they  point  to  no  facts  beyond  them- 
selves. That  men  loved  God  and  felt  his  pres- 
ence close  to  them  proves  nothing,  to  the  positive 
thinker,  as  to  God's  existence.  Nor  will  the  mere 
emotion  of  reverence  towards  life  necessarily  go  any 
farther  towards  proving  that  it  deserves  reverence. 
It  is  distinctly  asserted  by  the  modern  school  that 
the  right  state  in  which  to  approach  everything  is  a 
state  of  enlightened  scepticism.  "We  are  to  consider 
everything  doubtful,  until  it  is  proved  certain,  or 
unless,  from  its  very  nature,  it  is  not  possible  to 
doubt  it. 

Nor  is  this  all ;  for,  apart  from  these  modern 
canons,  the  question  of  life's  worth  has,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  been  always  recognised  as  in  a  certain  sense 
an  open  one.  The  greatest  intellects  of  the  world, 


THE  NEW  IMPORT  OF  THE  QUESTION.  9 

in  all  ages,  have  been  at  times  inclined  to  doubt  it. 
And  these  times  have  not  seemed  to  them  times  of 
blindness ;  but  on  the  contrary,  of  specially  clear 
insight.  Scales,  as  it  were,  have  fallen  from  their 
eyes  for  a  moment  or  two,  and  the  beauty  and  worth 
of  existence  has  appeared  to  them  as  but  a  deceiv- 
ing show.  An  entire  book  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
is  devoted  to  a  deliberate  exposition  of  this  philoso- 
phy. In  '  the  most  TiigJi  and  palmy  state'  of  Athens 
it  was  expressed  fitfully  also  as  the  deepest  wisdom 
of  her  most  triumphant  dramatist.1  And  in  Shak- 
speare  it  appears  so  constantly,  that  it  must  evi- 
dently have  had  for  him  some  directly  personal 
meaning. 

This  view,  however,  even  by  most  of  those  who 
have  held  it,  has  been  felt  to  be  really  only  a  half- 
view  in  the  guise  of  a  whole  one.  To  Shakspeare, 
for  instance,  it  was  full  of  a  profound  terror.  It 
crushed,  and  appalled,  and  touched  him  ;  and  there 
was  not  only  implied  in  it  that  for  us  life  does  mean 
little,  but  that  by  some  possibility  it  might  have 
meant  much.  Or  else,  if  the  pessimism  has  been 
more  complete  than  this,  it  has  probably  been 
adopted  as  a  kind  of  solemn  affectation,  or  has  else 
been  lamented  as  a  form  of  diseased  melancholy.  It 
is  a"  view  that  healthy  intellects  have  hitherto  declined 

1  Vide  Sophocles,  (Edipus  Coloneus. 


10  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

to  entertain.  Its  advocates  have  been  met  with 
neglect,  contempt,  or  castigation,  not  with  arguments. 
They  have  been  pitied  as  insane,  avoided  as  cynical, 
or  passed  over  as  frivolous.  And  yet,  but  for  one 
reason,  to  that  whole  European  world  whose  pro- 
gress we  are  now  inheriting,  this  view  would  have 
seemed  not  only  not  untenable,  but  even  obvious. 
The  emptiness  of  the  things  of  this  life,  the  incom- 
pleteness of  even  its  highest  pleasures,  and  their 
utter  powerlessness  to  make  us  really  happy,  has 
been,  at  least  for  fifteen  hundred  years,  a  common- 
place, both  with  saints  and  sages.  The  conception 
that  anything  in  this  life  could  of  itself  be  of  any 
great  moment  to  us,  was  considered  as  much  a 
puerility  unworthy  of  a  man  of  the  world,  as  a  dis- 
loyalty to  God.  Experience  of  life,  and  meditation 
on  life,  seemed  to  teach  nothing  but  the  same  lesson, 
seemed  to  preach  a  sermon  de  contemptu  mundi. 
The  view  the  eager  monk  began  with,  the  sated 
monarch  ended  with.  But  matters  did  not  end  here. 
There  was  something  more  to  come,  by  which  this 
view  was  altogether  transmuted,  and  which  made 
the  wilderness  and  the  waste  place  at  once  blossom 
as  the  rose.  Judged  of  by  itself,  this  life  would  in- 
deed be  vanity ;  but  it  was  not  to  be  judged  of  by 
itself.  All  its  ways  seemed  to  break  short  aimlessly 
into  precipices,  or  to  be  lost  hopelessly  in  deserts. 
They  led  to  no  visible  end.  True ;  but  they  led  to 


THE  NEW  IMPORT  OF  THE  QUESTION.  \\ 

ends  that  were  invisible — to  spiritual  and  eternal 
destinies,  to  triumphs  beyond  all  hope,  and  porten- 
tous failures  beyond  all  fear.  This  all  men  might 
see,  if  they  would  only  choose  to  see.  The  most 
trivial  of  our  daily  actions  became  thus  invested 
with  an  immeasurable  meaning.  Life  was  thus 
evidently  not  vanity,  not  an  idiot's  tale,  not  un- 
profitable ;  those  who  affected  to  think  it  was,  were 
naturally  disregarded  as  either  insane  or  insincere  : 
and  we  may  thus  admit  that  hitherto,  for  the  pro- 
gressive nations  of  the  world,  the  worth  of  life  has 
been  capable  of  demonstration,  and  safe  beyond  the 
reach  of  any  rational  questioning. 

But  now,  under  the  influence  of  positive  thought, 
all  this  is  changing.  Life,  as  we  have  all  of  us  in- 
herited it,  is  coloured  with  the  intense  colours  of 
Christianity ;  let  us  ourselves  be  personally  Chris- 
tians or  not,  we  are  instinct  with  feelings  with  regard 
to  it  that  were  applicable  to  it  in  its  Christian  state  : 
and  these  feelings  it  is  that  we  are  still  resolved  to 
retain.  As  the  most  popular  English  exponent  of 
the  new  school  says  :  '  All  positive  methods  of  treat- 
ing man,  of  a  comprehensive  kind,  adopt  to  the  full 
all  that  has  ever  been  said  about  the  dignity  of 
man's  moral  and  spiritual  life?  But  here  comes 
the  difficulty.  This  adoption  we  speak  of  must  be 
justified  upon  quite  new  reasons.  Indeed  it  is  prac- 
tically the  boast  of  its  advocates  that  it  must  be. 


12  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  t 

An  extreme  value,  as  we  see,  they  are  resolved  to 
give  to  life  ;  they  will  not  tolerate  those  who  deny 
its  existence.  But  they  are  obliged  to  find  it  in  the 
very  place  where  hitherto  it  has  been  thought  to  be 
conspicuous  by  its  absence.  It  is  to  be  found  in  no 
better  or  wider  future,  where  injustice  shall  be  turned 
to  justice,  trouble  into  rest,  and  blindness  into  clear 
sight ;  for  no  such  future  awaits  us.  It  is  to  be 
found  in  life  itself,  in  this  earthly  life,  this  life 
between  the  cradle  and  the  grave ;  and  though  im- 
agination and  sympathy  may  enlarge  and  extend 
this  for  the  individual,  yet  the  limits  of  its  exten- 
sion are  very  soon  arrived  at.  It  is  limited  by  the 
time  the  human  race  can  exist,  by  the  space  in  the 
universe  that  the  human  race  occupies,  and  the 
capacities  of  enjoyment  that  the  human  race  pos- 
sesses. Here,  then,  is  a  distinct  and  intelligible  task 
that  the  positive  thinkers  have  set  themselves.  They 
have  taken  everything  away  from  life  that  to  wise 
men  hitherto  has  seemed  to  redeem  it  from  vanity. 
They  have  to  prove  to  us  that  they  have  not  left  it 
vain.  They  have  to  prove  those  things  to  be  solid  that 
have  hitherto  been  thought  hollow  ;  those  things  to 
be  serious  that  have  hitherto  been  thought  contemp- 
tible. They  must  prove  to  us  that  we  shall  be  con- 
tented with  what  has  never  yet  contented  us,  and  that 
the  widest  minds  will  thrive  within  limits  that  have 
hitherto  been  thought  too  narrow  for  the  narrowest. 


THE  NEW  IMPORT  OF  THE  QUESTION.  13 

Now,  of  course,  so  far  as  we  can  tell  without  ex- 
amining the  matter,  they  may  be  able  to  accomplish 
this  revolution.  There  is  nothing  on  the  face  of  it 
that  is  impossible.  It  may  be  that  our  eyes  are  only 
blinded  to  the  beauty  of  the  earth  by  having  gazed 
so  long  and  so  vainly  into  an  empty  heaven,  and  that 
when  we  have  learnt  to  use  them  a  little  more  to  the 
purpose,  we  shall  see  close  at  hand  in  this  life  what 
we  had  been  looking  for,  all  this  while,  in  another. 
But  still,  even  if  this  revolution  be  possible,  the  fact 
remains  that  it  is  a  revolution,  and  it  cannot  be  ac- 
complished without  some  effort.  Our  positive  think- 
ers have  a  case  to  be  proved.  They  must  not  beg  the 
very  point  that  is  most  open  to  contradiction,  and 
which,  when  once  duly  apprehended,  will  be  most 
sure  to  provoke  it.  If  this  life  be  not  incapable  of 
satisfying  us,  let  them  show  us  conclusively  that  it  is 
not.  But  they  can  hardly  expect  that,  without  any 
such  showing  at  all,  the  world  will  deliberately  repel 
as  a  blasphemy  what  it  has  hitherto  accepted  as  a 
common-place. 

This  objection  is  itself  so  obvious  that  it  has  not 
escaped  notice.  But  the  very  fact  of  its  obviousness 
has  tended  to  hide  the  true  force  of  it,  and  coming  so 
readily  to  the  surface,  it  has  been  set  down  as  super- 
ficial. It  is,  however,  very  constantly  recognised, 
and  is  being  met  on  all  sides  with  a  very  elaborate 
answer.  It  is  this  answer  that  I  shall  now  proceed  to 


14  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

consider.  It  is  a  very  important  one,  and  it  deserves 
our  most  close  attention,  as  it  contains  the  chief 
present  argument  for  the  positive  faith  in  life.  I 
shall  show  how  this  argument  is  vitiated  by  a  funda- 
mental fallacy. 

It  is  admitted  that  to  a  hasty  glance  there  may  cer- 
tainly seem  some  danger^of  our  faith  in  life's  value 
collapsing,  together  with  our  belief  in  God.  It  is 
admitted  that  this  is  not  in  the  least  irrational.  But 
it  is  contended  that  a  scientific  study  of  the  past  will 
show  us  that  these  fears  are  groundless,  and  will  re- 
assure us  as  to  the  future.  We  are  referred  to  a  new 
branch  of  knowledge,  the  philosophy  of  history,  and 
we  are  assured  that  by  this  all  our  doubts  will  be  set 
at  rest.  This  philosophy  of  history  resembles,  on  an 
extended  scale,  the  practical  wisdom  learnt  by  the 
man  of  the  world.  As  long  as  a  man  is  inexperienced 
and  new  to  life,  each  calamity  as  it  comes  to  him 
seems  something  unique  and  overwhelming,  but  as 
he  lives  on,  suffers  more  of  them,  and  yet  finds  that 
he  is  not  overwhelmed,  he  learns  to  reduce  them  to 
their  right  dimensions,  and  is  able,  with  sufficient 
self-possession,  to  let  each  of  them  teach  some  useful 
lesson  to  him. 

Thus  we,  it  is  said,  if  we  were  not  better  instructed, 
might  naturally  take  the  present  decline  of  faith  to 
be  an  unprecedented  calamity  that  was  ushering  in 
an  eve  of  darkness  and  utter  ruin.  But  the  philoso- 


THE  NEW  IMPORT  OF  THE  QUESTION.  15 

phy  of  history  puts  the  whole  matter  in  a  different 
light.  It  teaches  us  that  the  condition  of  the  world 
in  our  day,  though  not  normal,  is  yet  by  no  means 
peculiar.  It  points  to  numerous  parallels  in  former 
ages,  and  treats  the  rise  and  fall  of  creeds  as  regular 
phenomena  in  human  history,  whose  causes  and  re- 
currence we  can  distinctly  trace.  Other  nations  and 
races  have  had  creeds,  and  have  lost  them ;  they 
have  thought,  as  some  of  us  think,  that  the  loss 
would  ruin  them :  and  yet  they  have  not  been 
ruined.  Creeds,  it  is  contended,  were  imaginative, 
provisional,  and  mistaken  expressions  of  the  un- 
derlying and  indestructible  sense  of  the  nobility  of 
human  life.  They  were  artistic,  not  scientific.  A 
statue  of  Apollo,  for  instance,  or  a  picture  of  the  Ma- 
donna, were  really  representations  of  what  men  aimed 
at  producing  on  earth,  not  of  what  actually  had  any 
existence  in  heaven.  And  if  we  look  back  at  the 
greatest  civilisations  of  antiquity,  we  shall  find,  it  is 
said,  that  what  gave  them  vigour  and  intensity  were 
purely  human  interests  :  and  though  religion  may  cer- 
tainly have  had  some  reflex  action  on  life,  this  action 
was  either  merely  political  or  was  else  injurious. 

It  is  thus  that  that  intense  Greek  life  is  presented 
to  us,  the  influence  of  which  is  still  felt  in  the  world. 
Its  main  stimulus  we  are  told  was  frankly  human. 
It  would  have  lost  none  of  its  keenness  if  its  theology 
had  been  taken  from  it.  And  there,  it  is  said,  we  see 


IQ  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

the  positive  worth  of  life ;  we  see  already  realised 
what  we  are  now  growing  to  realise  once  more.  Chris- 
tianity, with  its  supernatural  aims  and  objects,  is 
spoken  of  as  an  '  episode  of  disease  and  delirium  ; ' 
it  is  a  confusing  dream,  from  which  we  are  at  last 
awaking  ;  and  the  feelings  of  the  modern  school  are 
expressed  in  the  following  sentence  of  a  distin- 
guished modern  writer: '  i  Just  as  the  traveller,'  ho 
says,  'who  has  been,  worn  to  the  bone  by  years  of 
weary  striving  among  men  of  anotlier  sTcin,  suddenly 
gazes  with  doubting  eyes  upon  the  white  face  of  a 
brother,  so  if  we  travel  backwards  \n  thought  over  the 
darker  ages  of  the  history  of  Europe  we  at  length 
reach  back  with  such  bounding  heart  to  men  who  had 
like  hopes  with  ourselves,  and  shake  hands  across 
that  vast  with  .  .  .  our  own  spiritual  ancestors.1 

Nor  are  the  Greeks  the  only  nation  whose  history 
is  supposed  to  be  thus  so  reassuring  to  us.  The  ear- 
ly Jews  are  pointed  to,  in  the  same  way,  as  having 
felt  pre-eminently  the  dignity  of  this  life,  and  having 
yet  been  absolutely  without  any  belief  in  another. 
But  the  example,  which  for  us  is  perhaps  the  most 
forcible  of  all,  is  to  be  found  in  the  history  of  Rome, 
during  her  years  of  widest  activity.  We  are  told  to 
look  at  such  men  as  Cicero  or  as  Caesar — above  all  to 

1  Professor  Clifford, whose  study  of  history  leads  him  to  rogard  Catho- 
licism as  nothing  more  than  an  '  episode'  in  the  history  of  Westeia 
progress. 


TEE  NEW  IMPORT  OF  THE  QUESTION.  Yt 

such  men  as  Caesar — and  to  remember  what  a  reality 
life  was  to  them.  Caesar  certainly  had  little  religion 
enough  ;  and  what  he  may  have  had,  played  no  part 
in  making  his  life  earnest.  He  took  the  world  as  he 
found  it,  as  all  healthy  men  have  taken  it ;  and,  as  it 
is  said,  all  heal  thy  men  will  still  continue  to  take  it. 
Nor  was  such  a  life  as  Caesar's  peculiar  to  himself. 
It  represents  that  purely  human  life  that  flourished 
generally  in  such  vigour  amongst  the  Romans.  And 
the  consideration  of  it  is  said  to  be  all  the  more  in- 
structive, because  it  flourished  in  the  face  of  just  the 
same  conditions  that  we  think  so  disheartening  now. 
There  was  in  those  times,  as  there  is  in  ours,  a  wide 
disintegration  of  the  old  faiths  ;  and  to  many,  then 
as  now,  this  fact  seemed  at  once  sad  and  terrifying. 
As  we  read  Juvenal,  Petronius,  Lucian,  or  Apuleius, 
we  are  astounded  at  the  likeness  of  those  times  to 
these.  Even  in  minute  details,  they  correspond 
with  a  marvellous  exactness.  And  hence  there 
seems  a  strange  force  in  the  statement  that  history 
repeats  itself,  and  that  the  wisdom  learnt  from  the 
past  can  be  applied  to  the  present  and  the  future. 

But  all  this,  though  it  is  doubtless  true,  is  in  re- 
ality only  half  the  truth ;  and  as  used  in  the  argu- 
ments of  the  day,  it  amounts  practically  to  a  pro- 
found falsehood.  History  in  a  certain  sense,  of 
course,  does  repeat  itself;  and  the  thing  that  has 
been  is  in  a  certain  sense  the  thing  that  shall  be. 


18  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

But  there  is  a  deeper  and  a  wider  sense  in  which 
this  is  not  so.  Let  us  take  the  life  of  an  individual 
man,  for  instance.  A  man  of  fifty  will  retain  very 
likely  many  of  the  tastes  and  tricks  that  were  his, 
when  a  boy  of  ten :  and  people  who  have  known 
him  long  will  often  exclaim  that  he  is  just  the  same 
as  he  always  was.  But  in  spite  of  this,  they  will 
know  that  he  is  very  different.  His  hopes  will  have 
dwindled  down  ;  the  glow,  the  colour,  and  the  bright 
haze  will  have  gone  from  them ;  things  that  once 
amused  him  will  amuse  him  no  more  :  things  he 
once  thought  important,  he  will  consider  weary  tri- 
fles ;  and  if  he  thinks  anything  serious  at  all,  they 
will  not  be  things  he  thought  serious  when  a  boy. 
The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  year,  and  its  changing 
seasons.  The  history  of  a  single  year  may  be,  in 
one  sense,  said  to  repeat  itself  every  day.  There  is 
the  same  recurrence  of  light  and  darkness,  of  sun- 
rise and  of  sunset :  and  a  man  who  had  lived  only 
for  a  month  or  two,  might  fancy  that  this  recurrence 
was  complete.  But  let  him  live  a  little  longer,  and 
he  will  come  to  see  that  this  is  not  so.  Slowly 
through  the  summer  he  will  begin  to  discern  a 
change  ;  until  at  last  he  can  contrast  the  days  and 
nights  of  winter  with  the  days  and  nights  of  sum- 
mer, and  see  how  flowers  that  once  opened  fresh 
every  morning,  now  never  open  or  close  at  all.  Then 
he  will  see  that  the  two  seasons,  though  in  many 


THE  NEW  IMPORT  OF  THE  QUESTION.  19 

points  so  like  each  other,  are  yet,  in  a  far  deeper 
way,  different. 

And  so  it  is  with  the  world's  history.  Isolate  cer- 
tain phenomena,  and  they  do,  without  doubt,  repeat 
themselves;  but  it  is  only  when  isolated  that  they 
can  be  said  to  do  so.  In  many  points  the  European 
thought  and  civilisation  of  to-day  may  seem  to  be  a 
repetition  of  what  has  been  before  ;  we  may  fancy 
that  we  recognise  our  brothers  in  the  past,  and  that 
we  can,  as  the  writer  above  quoted  says,  shake 
hands  with  them  across  the  intervening  years.  But 
this  is  really  only  a  deceiving  fancy,  when  applied  to 
such  deep  and  universal  questions  as  those  we  have 
now  to  deal  with — to  religion,  to  positive  thought, 
and  to  the  worth  of  life.  The  positivists  and  the 
unbelievers  of  the  modern  world,  are  not  the  same  as 
those  of  the  ancient  world.  Even  when  their  lan- 
guage is  identical,  there  is  an  immeasurable  gulf  be- 
tween them.  In  our  denials  and  assertions  there 
are  certain  new  factors,  which  at  once  make  all  such 
comparisons  worthless.  The  importance  of  these 
will  by-and-by  appear  more  clearly,  but  I  shall  give 
a  brief  account  of  them  now. 

The  first  of  these  factors  is  the  existence  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  that  vast  and  undoubted  change  in  the 
world  of  which  it  has  been  at  once  the  cause  and  the 
index.  It  has  done  a  work,  and  that  work  still  re- 
mains :  and  we  all  feel  the  effects  of  it,  whether  we 


20  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

will  or  no.  Described  in  the  most  general  way,  that 
work  has  been  this.  The  supernatural,  in  the  ancient 
world,  was  something  vague  and  indefinite  :  and  the 
classical  theologies  at  any  rate,  though  they  were  to 
some  extent  formal  embodiments  of  it,  could  em- 
body really  but  a  very  small  part.  Zeus  and  the 
Olympian  hierarchies  were  dimly  perceived  to  be  en- 
circled by  some  vaster  mystery  ;  which  to  the  popu- 
lar mind  was  altogether  formless,  and  which  even 
such  men  as  Plato  could  only  describe  inadequately. 
The  supernatural  was  like  a  dim  and  diffused  light, 
brighter  in  some  places,  and  darker  in.  others,  but 
focalised  and  concentrated  nowhere.  Christianity 
has  focalised  it,  united  into  one  the  scattered  points 
of  brightness,  and  collected  other  rays  that  were  be- 
fore altogether  imperceptible.  That  vague  '  idea  of 
the  goodj  of  which  Plato  said  most  men  dimly 
augured  the  existence,  but  could  not  express  their 
augury,  has  been  given  a  definite  shape  to  by  Chris- 
tianity in  the  form  of  its  Deity.  That  Deity,  from 
an  external  point  of  view,  may  be  said  to  have  ac- 
quired His  sovereignty  as  did  the  Roman  CsBsar. 
He  absorbed  into  His  own  person  the  offices  of  all 
the  gods  that  were  before  him,  as  the  Roman  Csesar 
absorbed  all  the  offices  of  the  state  ;  and  in  His  case 
also,  as  has  been  said  of  the  Roman  C<esar,  the 
whole  was  immeasurably  greater  than  the  mere  sum 
of  the  parts.  Scientifically  and  philosophically  He 


THE  NEW  IMPORT  OF  THE  QUESTION.  21 

became  the  first  cause  of  the  world ;  He  became  the 
father  of  the  human  soul,  and  its  judge ;  and  what 
is  more,  its  rest  and  its  delight,  and  its  desire.  Un- 
der the  light  of  this  conception,  man  appeared  an 
ampler  being.  His  thoughts  were  for  ever  being 
gazed  on  by  the  great  controller  of  all  things ;  he 
was  made  in  the  likeness  of  the  Lord  of  lords  ;  he 
was  of  kin  to  the  power  before  which  all  the  visible 
world  trembled  ;  and  every  detail  in  the  life  of  a 
human  soul  became  vaster,  beyond  all  comparison, 
than  the  depths  of  space  and  time.  But  not  only 
did  the  sense  of  man's  dignity  thus  develop,  and 
become  definite.  The  accompanying  sense  of  his 
degradation  became  intenser  and  more  definite  also. 
The  gloom  of  a  sense  of  sin  is  to  be  found  in  ^Eschy- 
lus,  but  this  gloom  was  vague  and  formless.  Chris- 
tianity gave  to  it  both  depth  and  form ;  only  the 
despair  that  might  have  been  produced  in  this  way 
was  now  softened  by  hope.  Christianity  has,  in 
fact,  declared  clearly  a  supernatural  of  which  men 
before  were  more  or  less  ignorantly  conscious.  The 
declaration  may  or  may  not  have  been  a  complete 
one,  but  at  any  rate  it  is  the  completest  that  the 
world  has  yet  known.  And  the  practical  result  is 
this  :  when  we,  in  these  days,  deny  the  supernatu- 
ral, we  are  denying  it  in  a  way  in  which  it  was 
never  denied  before.  Our  denial  is  beyond  all 
comparison  more  complete.  The  supernatural,  for 


22  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

the  ancient  world,  was  like  a  perfume  scenting  life, 
out  of  a  hundred  different  vessels,  of  which  only 
two  or  three  were  visible  to  the  same  men  or  nations. 
They  therefore  might  get  rid  of  these,  and  yet  the 
larger  part  of  the  scent  would  still  remain  to  them. 
But  for  us,  it  is  as  though  all  the  perfume  had  been 
collected  into  a  single  vessel ;  and  if  we  get  rid  of 
this,  we  shall  get  rid  of  the  scent  altogether.  Our 
air  will  be  altogether  odourless. 

The  materialism  of  Lucretius  is  a  good  instance  of 
this.  In  many  ways  his  denials  bear  a  strong  re- 
semblance to  ours.  But  the  resemblance  ceases  a 
little  below  the  surface.  He  denied  the  theology  of 
his  time  as  strongly  as  our  positive  thinkers  deny 
the  theology  of  ours.  But  the  theology  he  denied 
was  incomplete  and  puerile.  He  was  not  denying 
any  '  All-embracer  and  All-sustainer,'  for  he  knew 
of  none  such.  And  his  denial  of  the  gods  he  did 
deny  left  him  room  for  the  affirmation  of  others, 
whose  existence,  if  considered  accurately,  was  equal- 
ly inconsistent  with  his  own  scientific  premisses. 
Again,  in  his  denial  of  any  immortality  for  man, 
what  he  denied  is  not  the  future  that  we  are  deny- 
ing. The  only  future  he  knew  of  was  one  a  belief 
in  which  had  no  influence  on  us,  except  for  sadness. 
It  was  a  protraction  only  of  what  is  worst  in  life  ;  it 
was  in  no  way  a  completion  of  what  is  best  in  it. 
But  with  us  the  case  is  altogether  different.  For- 


THE  XEW  IMPORT  OF  THE  QUESTION.  23 

merly  the  supernatural  could  not  be  denied  com- 
pletely, because  it  was  not  known  completely.  Not 
to  affirm  is  a  very  different  thing  from  to  deny.  And 
many  beliefs  which  the  positivists  of  the  modern 
world  are  denying,  the  positivists  of  the  ancient 
world  more  or  less  consciously  lived  by. 

Next,  there  is  this  point  to  remember.  Whilst 
during  the  Christian  centuries,  the  devotion  to  a  su- 
pernatural and  extramundane  aim  has  been  engen- 
dering, as  a  recent  writer  has  observed  with  indigna- 
tion, a  degrading  'pessimism  as  to  the  essential  dig- 
nity of  man^1  the  world  which  we  have  been  to  a 
certain  extent  disregarding  has  been  changing  its 
character  for  us.  In  a  number  of  ways,  whilst  we 
have  not  been  perceiving  it,  its  objective  grandeur 
has  been  dwindling ;  and  the  imagination,  when 
again  called  to  the  feat,  cannot  reinvest  it  with  its 
old  gorgeous  colouring.  Once  the  world,  with  the 
human  race,  who  were  the  masters  of  it,  was  a  thing 
of  vast  magnitude — the  centre  of  the  whole  creation. 
The  mind  had  no  larger  conceptions  -that  were  vivid 
enough  to  dwarf  it.  But  now  all  this  has  changed. 
In  the  words  of  a  well-known  modern  English  histo- 
rian, '  Tlie  floor  of  7ieaven,  inlaid  witli  stars,  lias 
sunk  ~back  into  an  infinite  abyss  of  immeasurable 
space ;  and  tlie  firm  eartli  itself,  unfixed  from  its 

1  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison. 


24  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

foundations,  is  seen  to  J>e  but  a  small  atom  in  the 
awful  easiness  of  the  universe.1 '  The  whole  posi- 
tion, indeed,  is  reversed.  The  skies  once  seemed  to 
pay  the  earth  homage,  and  to  serve  it  with  light  and 
shelter.  Now  they  do  nothing,  so  far  as  the  imagi- 
nation is  concerned,  but  spurn  and  dwarf  it.  And 
when  we  come  to  the  details  of  the  earth's  surface 
itself,  the  case  is  just  the  same.  It,  in  its  extent, 
has  grown  little  and  paltry  to  us.  The  wonder  and 
the  mystery  has  gone  from  it.  A  Cockney  excur- 
sionist goes  round  it  in  a  holiday  trip  ;  there  are  no 

Golden  cities,  ten  montlis  journey  deep, 
In  far  Tartarian  wilds  /* 

nor  do  the  confines  of  civilisation,  melt  as  they  once 
did,  into  any  unknown  and  unexplored  wonderlands. 
And  thus  a  large  mass  of  sentiment  that  was  once 
powerful  in  the  world  is  now  rapidly  dwindling,  and, 
so  far  as  we  can  see,  there  is  nothing  that  can  ever 
exactly  replace  it.  Patriotism,  for  instance,  can 
never  again  be  the  religion  it  was  to  Athens,  or  the 
pride  it  was  to  Rome.  Men  are  not  awed  and  moved 
as  once  they  were  by  local  and  material  splendours. 
The  pride  of  life,  it  is  true,  is  still  eagerly  coveted  ; 
but  by  those  at  least  who  are  most  familiar  with  it, 
it  is  courted  and  sought  for  with  a  certain  contempt 

1  Mr.  Froude,  History  of  England,  chap.  i. 
8  Wordsworth. 


TUB  NEW  IMPORT  OF  THE  QUESTION.  25 

and  cynicism.  It  is  treated  like  a  courtesan,  rather 
than  like  a  goddess.  Whilst  as  to  the  higher  enthu- 
siasm that  was  once  excited  by  external  things,  the 
world  in  its  present  state  could  no  more  work  itself 
up  to  this  than  a  girl,  after  three  seasons,  could 
again  go  for  dissipation  to  her  dolls.  She  might 
look  back  to  the  time  of  dolls  with  regret.  She 
might  see  that  the  interest  they  excited  in  her  was, 
perhaps,  far  more  pleasing  than  any  she  had  found 
in  love.  But  the  dolls  would  never  rival  her  lovers, 
none  the  less.  And  with  man,  and  his  aims  and  ob- 
jects, the  case  is  just  the  same.  And  we  must  re- 
member that  to  realise  keenly  the  potency  of  a  past 
ideal,  is  no  indication  that  practically  it  will  ever 
again  be  powerful. 

Briefly,  then,  the  positive  school  of  to-day  we  see 
thus  far  to  be  in  this  position.  It  has  to  make  de- 
mands upon  human  life  that  were  never  made  be- 
fore ;  and  human  life  is,  in  many  ways,  less  able  than 
it  ever  was  to  answer  to  them. 

But  this  is  not  all.  There  is  a  third  matter  yet 
left  to  consider — a  third  factor  in  the  case,  peculiar 
to  the  present  crisis.  That  is  the  intense  self -con- 
sciousness that  is  now  developed  in  the  world,  and 
which  is  something  altogether  new  to  it.  During 
the  last  few  generations  man  has  been  curiously 
changing.  Much  of  his  old  spontaneity  of  action 
has  gone  from  him.  He  has  become  a  creature  look- 


26  ^9f  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

ing  before  and  after ;  and  his  native  line  of  resolu- 
tion has  been  sickled  over  by  thought.  We  admit 
nothing  now  without  question ;  we  have  learnt  to 
take  to  pieces  all  motives  to  actions.  We  not  only 
know  more  than  we  have  done  before,  but  we  are 
perpetually  chewing  the  cud  of  our  knowledge. 
Thus  positive  thought  reduces  all  religions  to  ideals 
created  by  man  ;  and  as  such,  not  only  admits  that 
they  have  had  vast  influence,  but  teaches  us  also 
that  we  in  the  future  must  construct  new  ideals  for 
ourselves.  Only  there  will  be  this  difference.  We 
shall  now  know  that  they  are  ideals,  we  shall  no 
longer  mistake  them  for  objective  facts.  But  our 
positive  thinkers  forget  this.  They  forget  that  the 
ideals  that  were  once  active  in  the  world  were  active 
amongst  people  who  thought  that  they  were  more 
than  ideals,  and  who  very  certainly  did  mistake 
them  for  facts ;  and  they  forget  how  different  their 
position  will  be,  as  soon  as  their  true  nature  is  re- 
cognised. There  is  no  example,  so  far  as  I  know,  to 
be  found  in  all  history,  of  men  having  been  stimu- 
lated or  affected  in  any  important  way — none,  at  any 
rate,  of  their  having  been  restrained  or  curbed — by 
a  mere  ideal  that  was  known  to  have  no  reality  to 
correspond  to  it.  A  child  is  frightened  when  its 
nurse  tells  it  that  a  black  man  will  come  down  the 
chimney  and  take  it  away.  The  black  man,  it  is 
true,  is  only  an  ideal ;  and  yet  the  child  is  affected. 


THE  NEW  IMPORT  OF  THE  QUESTION.  27 

But  it  would  cease  to  be  affected  the  instant  it  knew 
this. 

As  we  go  on  with  our  enquiry  these  considerations 
will  become  plainer  to  us.  But  enough  has  even 
now  been  said  to  show  how  distinct  the  present  po- 
sition is  from  any  that  have  gone  before  it,  and  how 
little  the  experience  of  the  past  is  really  fitted  to  re- 
assure us.  Greek  and  Roman  thought  was  positive, 
in  our  sense  of  the  word,  only  in  a  very  small  degree. 
The  thought  of  the  other  ancient  empires  was  not 
positive  at  all.  The  oldest  civilisation  of  which  any 
record  is  left  to  us — the  civilisation  of  Egypt — was 
based  on  a  theism  which,  of  all  other  theisms,  most 
nearly  approaches  ours.  And  the  doctrine  of  a  fu- 
ture life  was  first  learnt  by  the  Jews  from  their  mas- 
ters during  the  Captivity.  We  search  utterly  in 
vain  through  history  for  any  parallel  to  our  own 
negations. 

I  have  spoken  hitherto  of  those  peoples  only 
whose  history  more  or  less  directly  has  affected 
ours.  But  there  is  a  vast  portion  of  the  human  race 
with  which,  roughly  speaking,  our  progress  has  had 
no  connection ;  aud  the  religions  of  these  races, 
which  are  now  for  the  first  time  beginning  to  be  ac- 
curately studied,  are  constantly  being  appealed  to 
in  support  of  the  positive  doctrines.  Thus  it  is 
urged  by  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  that  '  the  briefest  old- 
line  of  the  religious  history  of  mankind  shows  that 


28  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVlXQt 

creeds  which  can  count  more  adherents  than  Chris- 
tianity^ and  have  flourished  through  a  longer  pe- 
riod, have  omitted  all  that  makes  the  Christian  doc- 
trine of  a  future  state  valuable  in  the  eyes  of  the 
supporters  /'  and  Dr.  Tyndall  points  with  the  same 
delighted  confidence  to  the  gospel  of  Buddhism,  as 
one  of  '•pure  human  ethics,  divorced  not  only  from 
Brahma  and  the  Brahminic  Trinity,  ~but  even  from 
the  existence  of  God.n  Many  other  such  appeals 
are  made  to  what  are  somewhat  vaguely  called  '  the 
multitudinous  creeds  of  the  East  ^  but  it  is  to 
Buddhism,  in  its  various  forms,  that  they  would  all 
seem  to  apply.  Let  us  now  consider  the  real  result 
of  them.  Our  positivists  have  appealed  to  Bud- 
dhism, and  to  Buddhism  they  shall  certainly  go. 
It  is  one  of  the  vastest  and  most  significant  of 
all  human  facts.  But  its  significance  is  some- 
what different  from  what  it  is  popularly  supposed 
to  be. 

That  the  Buddhist  religion  has  had  a  wide  hold 
on  the  world  is  true.  Indeed,  forty  per  cent,  of  the 
whole  human  race  at  this  moment  profess  it.  Ex- 
cept the  Judaic,  it  is  the  oldest  of  existing  creeds  ; 
and  beyond  all  comparison  it  numbers  most  adhe- 
rents. And  it  is  quite  true  also  that  it  does  not,  in 
its  pure  state,  base  its  teaching  on  the  belief  in  any 
personal  God,  or  offer  as  an  end  of  action  any  happi- 

1  Quoted  by  Dr.  Tyndall  from  Professor  Blackie. 


TEE  NEW  IMPOET  OF  THE  QUESTION.  29 

* 

ness  in  any  immortal  life.  But  it  does  not  for  this 
reason  bear  any  real  resemblance  to  our  modern 
Western  positivism,  nor  give  it  any  reason  to  be  san- 
guine. On  the  contrary,  it  is  most  absolutely  op- 
posed to  it ;  and  its  success  is  due  to  doctrines  which 
Western  positivism  most  emphatically  repudiates. 
In  the  first  place,  so  far  from  being  based  on  exact 
thought,  Buddhism  takes  for  its  very  foundation 
four  great  mysteries,  that  are  explicitly  beyond  the 
reach  either  of  proof  or  reason ;  and  of  these  the 
foremost  and  most  intelligible  is  the  transmigration 
and  renewal  of  the  existence  of  the  individual.  It  is 
by  this  mystical  doctrine,  and  by  this  alone,  that 
Buddhism  gains  a  hold  on  the  common  heart  of 
man.  This  is  the  great  fulcrum  of  its  lever.  Then 
further — and  this  is  more  important  still — whereas 
the  doctrine  of  Western  positivism  is  that  human 
life  is  good,  or  may  be  made  good  ;  and  that  in  the 
possibility  of  the  enjoyment  of  it  consists  the  great 
stimulus  to  action  ;  the  doctrine  of  Buddhism  is  that 
human  life  is  evil,  and  that  man's  right  aim  is  not  to 
gratify,  but  to  extinguish,  his  desire  for  it.  Love, 
for  instance,  as  I  have  said  before,  is  by  most  West- 
ern positivists  held  to  be  a  high  blessing.  Buddhism 
tells  us  we  should  avoid  it  '  as  though  it  were  a  pit 
of  burning  coals. ,'  The  most  influential  positive 
writer  in  England l  has  said  :  *  /  desire  no  future 

1  George  Eliot. 


30  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

• 

that  will  break  the  ties  of  the  past.'  Buddhism  says 
that  we  should  desire  no  present  that  will  create  any 
ties  for  the  future.  The  beginning  of  the  Buddhist 
teaching  is  the  intense  misery  of  life  ;  the  reward  of 
Buddhist  holiness  is  to,  at  last,  live  no  longer.  If 
we  die  in  our  sins,  we  shall  be  obliged  to  live  again 
on  the  earth ;  and  it  will  not  be,  perhaps,  till  after 
many  lives  that  the  necessity  for  fresh  births  will  be 
exhausted.  But  when  we  have  attained  perfection, 
the  evil  spell  is  broken ;  and  '  then  the  wise  man?  it 
is  said,  '  is  extinguished  as  this  lamp.'  The  highest 
life  was  one  of  seclusion  and  asceticism.  The  found- 
er of  Buddhism  was  met,  during  his  first  preach- 
ing, with  the  objection  that  his  system,  if  carried 
out  fully,  would  be  the  ruin  and  the  extermination 
of  humanity.  And  he  did  not  deny  the  charge  ;  but 
said  that  what  his  questioners  called  ruin,  was  in 
reality  the  highest  good* 

It  is  then  hard  to  conceive  an  appeal  more  singu- 
larly infelicitous  than  that  which  our  modern  posi- 
tivists  make  to  Buddhism.  It  is  the  appeal  of 
optimists  to  inveterate  pessimists,  and  of  exact 
thinkers  to  inveterate  mystics.  If  the  consideration 
of  it  tells  us  anything  of  importance,  it  tells  us  this 
—that  by  far  the  largest  mass  of  mankind  that  has 
ever  been  united  by  a  single  creed  has  explicitly 
denied  every  chief  point  that  our  Western  teachers 
assert.  So  far  then  from  helping  to  close  the  ques- 


THE  NEW  IMPORT  OF  THE  QUESTION.  31 

tion  we  are  to  deal  with — the  question  as  to  the 
positive  worth  of  life,  the  testimony  of  Buddhism, 
if  it  be  of  any  weight  at  all,  can  only  go  to  convince 
us  that  the  question  is  at  once  new  and  open — new, 
because  it  has  never  yet  been  asked  so  fully ;  and 
open,  because  in  so  far  as  it  has  been  asked,  nearly 
half  mankind  has  repudiated  the  answer  that  we 
are  so  desirous  of  giving  it.  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  calls 
Buddhism  'a  stupendous  fact,'  and  I  quite  agree 
with  him  that  it  is  so  ;  but  taken  in  connection  with 
the  present  philosophy  of  Europe,  it  is  hardly  a  fact 
to  strengthen  our  confidence  in  the  essential  dignity 
of  man,  or  the  worth  of  man's  life. 

In  short,  the  more  we  consider  the  matter,  and  the 
more  various  the  points  from  which  we  do  so,  the 
more  plain  will  it  become  to  us  that  the  problem  the 
present  age  is  confronted  by  is  an  altogether  unan- 
swered one  ;  and  that  the  closest  seeming  parallels  to 
be  found  amongst  other  times  and  races,  have  far 
less  really  of  parallelism  in  them  than  of  contrast. 
The  path  of  thought,  as  it  were,  has  taken  a  sudden 
turn  round  a  mountain  ;  and  our  bewildered  eyes 
are  staring  on  an  undreamed-of  prospect.  The 
leaders  of  progress  thus  far  have  greeted  the  sight 
with  acclamation,  and  have  confidently  declared 
that  we  are  looking  on  the  promised  land.  But  to 
the  more  thoughtful,  and  to  the  less  impulsive,  it  is 
plain  that  a  mist  hangs  over  it,  and  that  we  have  no 


32  75  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

right  to  be  sure  whether  it  is  the  promised  land  or 
no.  They  see  grave  reasons  for  making  a  closer 
scrutiny,  and  for  asking  if,  when  the  mist  lifts,  what 
we  see  will  be  not  splendour,  but  desolation. 

Such,  in  brief  outline,  is  the  question  we  are  to 
deal  with.  We  will  now  go  on  to  approach  it  in  a 
more  detailed  way. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  PRIZE   OF  LIFE. 

'  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  a  treasure  hid  in  afield,' 

HAVING  thus  seen  broadly  what  is  meant  by  that 
claim  for  life  that  we  are  about  to  analyse,  we  must 
now  examine  it  more  minutely,  as  made  by  the  posi- 
tive school  themselves. 

This  will  at  once  make  evident  one  important 
point.  The  worth  in  question  is  closely  bound  up 
with  what  we  call  morality.  In  this  respect  our 
deniers  of  the  supernatural  claim  to  be  on  as  firm  a 
footing  as  the  believers  in  it.  They  will  not  admit 
that  the  earnestness  of  life  is  lessened  for  them  ;  or 
that  they  have  opened  any  door  either  to  levity  or 
to  licentiousness.  It  is  true  indeed  that  it  is  allowed 
occasionally  that  the  loss  of  a  faith  in  God,  and  of  the 
life  in  a  future,  may,  under  certain  circumstances, 
be  a  real  loss  to  us.  Others  again  contend  that 
this  loss  is  a  gain.  Such  views  as  these,  however, 
are  not  much  to  the  purpose.  For  those  even,  ac- 
cording to  whom  life  has  lost  most  in  this  way,  do 
not  consider  the  loss  a  very  important,  still  less  a 
fatal  one.  The  good  is  still  to  be  an  aim  for  us,  and 
our  devotion  to  it  will  be  more  valuable  because  it 
3  33 


34  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LI  VINO  f 

will  be  quite  disinterested.  Thus  Dr.  Tyndall  in- 
forms us  that  though  he  has  now  rejected  the  relig- 
ion of  his  earlier  years,  yet  granting  him  proper 
health  of  body,  there  is  '  no  spiritual  experience,'' 
such  as  he  then  knew,  '  no  resolve  of  duty,  no  work 
of  mercy,  no  act  of  self -renouncement,  no  solemnity 
of  thought,  no  joy  in  the  life  and  aspects  of  nature, 
that  would  not  still  be '  his.  The  same  is  the  im- 
plicit teaching  of  all  George  Eliot's  novels  ;  whilst 
Professor  Huxley  tells  us  that  come  what  may  to 
our  '  intellectual  beliefs  and  even  education,'  '  tlie 
beauty  of  holiness  and  the  ugliness  of  sin '  will  re- 
main for  those  that  have  eyes  to  see  them,  '  no  mere 
metaphors,  but  real  and  intense  feelings.''  These 
are  but  a  few  examples,  but  the  view  of  life  they  il- 
lustrate is  so  well  known  that  these  few  will  suffice. 
The  point  on  which  the  modern  positivist  school  is 
most  vehement,  is  that  it  does  not  destroy,  but 
that  on  the  contrary  it  intensifies,  the  distinction 
between  right  and  wrong. 

And  now  let  us  consider  what,  according  to  all 
positive  theories,  this  supremacy  of  morality  means. 
It  means  that  there  is  a  certain  course  of  active  life, 
and  a  certain  course  only,  by  which  life  can  be  made 
by  everyone  a  beautiful  and  a  noble  thing :  and  life 
is  called  earnest,  because  such  a  prize  is  within  our 
reach,  and  solemn  because  there  is  a  risk  that  AVC 
may  fail  to  reach  it.  Were  this  not  so,  right  and 


THE  PRIZE  OF  LIFK.  35 

wrong  could  have  no  general  and  objective  meaning. 
They  would  be  purely  personal  matters — mere  mis- 
leading names,  in  fact,  for  the  private  likes  and  the 
dislikes  of  each  of  us  ;  and  to  talk  of  right,  and 
good,  and  morality,  as  things  that  we  ought  all 
to  conform  to,  and  to  live  by,  would  be  simply 
to  talk  nonsense.  What  the  very  existence  of  a 
moral  system  implies  is,  that  whatever  may  be  our 
personal  inclinations  naturally,  there  is  some  com- 
mon pattern  to  which  they  should  be  all  ad- 
justed ;  the  reason  being  that  we  shall  so  all  be- 
come partakers  in  some  common  happiness,  which 
is  greater  beyond  comparison  than  every  other 
kind. 

Here  we  are  presented  with  two  obvious  tasks : 
the  first,  to  enquire  what  this  happiness  is,  what  are 
the  qualities  and  attractions  generally  ascribed  to 
it ;  the  second,  to  analyse  it,  as  it  is  thus  held  up  to 
us,  and  to  see  if  its  professed  ingredients  are  suf- 
ficient to  make  up  the  result. 

To  proceed  then,  all  moral  systems  must,  as  we  have 
just  seen,  postulate  some  end  of  action,  an  end  to 
which  morality  is  the  only  road.  Further,  this  end 
is  the  one  thing  in  life  that  is  really  worth  attaining ; 
and  since  we  have  to  do  with  no  life  other  than  this 
one,  it  must  be  found  amongst  the  days  and  years  of 
which  this  short  life  is  the  aggregate.  On  the  ade- 
quacy of  this  universal  end  depends  the  whole  ques- 


36  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING* 

tion  of  the  positive  worth  of  life,  and  the  essential 
dignity  of  man. 

That  this  is  at  least  one  way  of  stating  the  case  has 
been  often  acknowledged  by  the  positive  moralists 
themselves.  The  following  passage,  for  instance,  is 
from  the  autobiography  of  J.  S.  Mill.  '  From  the 
winter  of  1821,'  he  writes,  'when  I  first  read  Ben- 
tham.  .  .  .  I  had  what  might  truly  be  called  an  ob- 
ject in  life,  to  be  a  reformer  of  the  world.  ...  I  en- 
deavoured to  pick  up  as  many  flowers  as  1  could  by 
the  way  ;  but  as  a  serious  and  permanent  personal 
satisfaction  to  rest  upon,  my  whole  reliance  was 
placed  on  this.  .  .  .  But  the  time  came  when  I 
awakened  from  this  as  from  a  dream.  .  .  .  It  occur- 
red to  me  to  put  the  question  directly  to  myself: 
"  Suppose  that  all  your  objects  in  life  realised  ;  that 
all  the  changes  in  institutions  and  opinions  which 
you  were  looking  forward  to,  could  be  completely  ef- 
fected in  this  very  instant,  would  this  be  a  very  great 
joy  and  happiness  to  you  ?"  And  an  irrepressible 
self -consciousness  distinctly  answered  "  No  /  "  At 
this  my  heart  sank  within  me :  the  whole  foundation 
on  which  my  life  was  constructed  fell  down.  .  .  . 
The  end  had  ceased  to  charm,  and  how  could  there 
ever  again  be  any  interest  in  the  means  ?  I  seemed 
to  have  nothing  left  to  live  for.  .  .  .  The  lines  in 
Coleridge's  "  Dejection"  exactly  describe  my  case : — 


THE  PRIZE  OF  LIFE.  37 

"  0 grief  icithout  a  pang,  void,  dark  and  drear, 
A  dreary,  stifled,  unimpassioned  grief, 
Which  finds  no  natural  outlet  nor  relief 
In  word,  or  sigJt,  or  tear. 

Work  ifithout  hope  draws  nectar  in  a  sieve, 
And  life  mthout  an  object  cannot  live." ' 

And  the  foregoing  confession  is  made  more  significant 
by  the  author's  subsequent  comment  on  it.  '  Though 
my  dejection,*1  lie  says,  '  honestly  looked  at,  could 
not  be  called  otJier  than  egotistical,  produced  by  the 
ruin,  as  I  thought,  of  my  fabric  of  happiness,  yet 
the  destiny  of  mankind  was  ever  in  my  thoughts, 
and  could  not  be  separated  from  my  own.  I  felt  that 
the  flaw  in  my  life  must  be  a  flaw  in  life  itself ;  and 
that  the  question  was  whether,  if  the  reformers  of 
society  and  government  could  succeed  in  their  objects, 
and  every  per  son  in  the  community  were  free,  and  in 
a  state  of  physical  comfort,  the  pleasures  of  life 
being  no  longer  Jcept  up  by  struggle  and  privation, 
would  cease  to  be  pleasures.  And  I  felt  that  unless 
I  could  see  some  better  hope  than  this  for  human 
happiness  in  general,  m,y  dejection  must  continue.'1 
It  is  true  that  in  Mill' s  case  the  dejection  did  not 
continue  ;  and  that  in  certain  ways  at  which  it  is  not 
yet  time  to  touch,  he  succeeded,  to  his  own  satisfac- 
tion, in  finding  the  end  he  was  thus  asking  for.  I 
only  quote  him  to  show  how  necessary  he  considered 


38  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

such  an  end  to  be.  He  acknowledged  the  fact,  not 
only  theoretically,  or  with  his  lips,  but  by  months  of 
misery,  by  intermittent  thoughts  of  suicide,  and  by 
years  of  recurring  melancholy.  Some  ultimate  end 
of  action,  some  kind  of  satisfying  happiness — this, 
and  this  alone,  he  felt,  could  give  any  meaning  to 
work,  or  make  possible  any  kind  of  virtue.  And  a 
yet  later  authority  has  told  us  precisely  the  same 
thing.  He  has  told  us  that  the  one  great  question 
that  education  is  of  value  for  answering,  is  this  very 
question  that  was  so  earnestly  asked  by  Mill.  '  The 
ultimate  end  of  education,''  says  Professor  Huxley, 
'  is  to  promote  morality  and  refinement,  ~by  teaching 
men  to  discipline  themselves,  and~by  leading  them  to 
see  that  the  highest,  as  it  is  the  only  content,  is  to 
be  attained  not  by  grovelling  in  the  rank  and  steam- 
ing valleys  of  sense,  but  by  continually  striving  to- 
wards those  high  peaks,  where,  resting  in  eternal 
calm,  reason  discerns  the  undefined  but  bright  ideal 
of  the  highest  good — "a  cloud  by  day,  a  pillar  of 
fire  by  night"  And  these  words  are  an  excellent 
specimen  of  the  general  moral  exhortations  of  the 
new  school. 

Now  all  this  is  very  well  as  far  as  it  goes  ;  and  were 
there  not  one  thing  lacking,  it  would  be  just  the  an- 
swer that  we  are  at  present  so  anxious  to  elicit.  But 
the  one  thing  lacking,  is  enough  to  make  it  valueless. 
It  may  mean  a  great  deal ;  but  there  is  no  possibility 


THE  PRIZE  OF  LIFE.  39 

of  saying  exactly  what  it  means.  Before  we  can  be- 
gin to  strive  towards  the  'highest  good,'  we  must 
know  something  of  what  this  '  highest  good '  is.  We 
must  make  this  '  higher  ideal '  stand  and  unfold  it- 
self. If  it  cannot  be  made  to  do  this,  if  it  vanishes 
into  mist  as  we  near  it,  and  takes  a  different  shape  to 
each  of  us  as  we  recede  from  it ;  still  more,  if  only 
some  can  see  it,  and  to  others  it  is  quite  invisible — 
then  we  must  simply  set  it  down  as  an  illusion,  and 
waste  no  more  time  in  pursuit  of  it.  But  that  it  is 
not  an  illusion  is  the  great  positivist  claim  for  it. 
Heaven  and  the  love  of  God,  we  are  told,  were  illu- 
sions. This  'highest  good'  we  are  offered,  stands 
out  in  clear  contradistinction  to  these.  It  is  an  ac- 
tual attainable  thing,  a  thing  for  flesh  and  blood 
creatures  ;  it  is  to  be  won  and  enjoyed  by  them  in 
their  common  daily  life.  It  is,  as  its  prophets  dis- 
tinctly and  unanimously  tell  us,  some  form  of  happi- 
ness that  results  in  this  life  to  us,  from  certain  con- 
duct ;  it  is  a  thing  essentially  for  the  present ;  and 
'  it  is  obviously  J  says  Professor  Huxley,  '  in  no  way 
affected  ~by  abbreviation  or  prolongation  of  our  con- 
scious life.'' 

This  being  the  case,  it  is  clearly  not  unreasonable 
to  demand  some  explicit  account  of  it ;  or  if  no  sound 
account  of  it  be  extant,  to  enquire  diligently  what 
sort  of  account  of  it  is  possible.  And  let  it  be  re- 
membered that  to  make  this  demand  is  in  no  way  to 


40  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

violate  the  great  rule  of  Aristotle,  and  to  demand  a 
greater  accuracy  than  the  nature  of  the  subject  will 
admit  of.  The  '  highest  good,'  it  is  quite  possible, 
may  be  a  vague  thing ;  not  capable,  like  a  figure  in 
Euclid,  of  being  defined  exactly.  But  many  vague 
things  can  be  described  exactly  enough  for  all  prac- 
tical purposes.  They  can  be  described  so  that  we  at 
once  know  what  is  meant,  and  so  that  we  can  at  once 
find  and  recognise  them.  Feelings,  characters,  and 
personal  appearance  are  things  of  this  sort ;  so  too  is 
the  taste  of  food,  the  style  of  furniture,  or  the  gen- 
eral tone  and  tenour  of  our  life,  under  various  cir- 
cumstances. And  the  'good'  we  are  now  consider- 
ing can  surely  be  not  less  describable  than  these. 
When  therefore  our  exact  thinkers  speak  to  us  about 
the  highest  happiness,  we  want  to  know  what  mean- 
ing they  attach  to  the  words.  Has  Professor  Huxley, 
for  instance,  ever  enjoyed  it  himself,  or  does  he  ever 
hope  to  do  so  ?  If  so,  when,  where,  and  how  ?  What 
must  be  done  to  get  it,  and  what  must  be  left  undone  ? 
And  when  it  is  got,  what  will  it  be  like  ?  Is  it  some- 
thing brief,  rapturous,  and  intermittent,  as  the  lan- 
guage often  used  about  it  might  seem  to  suggest  to 
one  ?  Is  it  known  only  in  brief  moments  of  Neoplatonic 
ecstasy,  to  which  all  the  acts  of  life  should  be  step- 
ping stones  ?  It  certainly  cannot  be  that.  Our  exact 
thinkers  are  essentially  no  mystics,  and  the  highest 
happiness  must  be  something  far  more  solid  than  tran- 


THE  PRIZE  OF  LIFE.  41 

scendental  ecstasies.  Surely,  therefore,  if  it  exists 
at  all  we  must  be  able  somewhere  to  lay  our  hands 
upon  it.  It  is  a  pillar  of  tire  by  night ;  surely  then  it 
will  be  visible.  It  is  to  be  lifted  up,  and  is  to  draw  all 
men  unto  it.  It  is  nothing  if  not  this  :  and  we  shall 
see  more  clearly  if  we  consider  the  matter  further. 

This  chief  good,  or  this  highest  happiness,  being 
the  end  of  moral  action,  one  point  about  it  is  at  once 
evident.  Its  value  is  of  course  recognised  by  those 
who  practise  morality,  or  who  enunciate  moral  sys- 
tems. Virtuous  men  are  virtuous  because  the  end 
gained  by  virtue  is  an  end  that  they  desire  to  gain. 
But  this  is  not  enough  ;  it  is  not  enough  that  to  men 
who  are  already  seeking  the  good  the  good  should 
appear  in  all  its  full  attractiveness.  It  must  be  capa- 
ble of  being  made  attractive  for  those  who  do  not 
know  it,  and  who  have  never  sought  it,  but  who 
have,  on  the  contrary,  always  turned  away  from 
everything  that  is  supposed  to  lead  to  it.  It  must 
be  able,  in  other  words,  not  only  to  satisfy  the  virtu- 
ous of  the  wisdom  of  their  virtue,  it  must  be  able  to 
convince  the  vicious  of  the  folly  of  their  vice.  Vice 
is  only  bad  in  the  eye  of  the  positive  moralist  be- 
cause of  the  precious  something  that  we  are  at  the 
present  moment  losing  by  it.  He  can  only  convince 
us  of  our  error  by  giving  us  some  picture  of  our  loss. 
And  he  must  be  able  to  do  this,  if  his  system  is  worth 
anything ;  and  in  promulgating  his  system  he  pro- 


42  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

f esses  that  he  can  do  it.  The  physician's  work  is 
to  heal  the  sick  ;  his  skill  must  not  end  in  explain- 
ing his  own  health.  It  is  clear  that  if  a  morality  is 
incapable  of  being  preached,  it  is  useless  to  say  that 
it  is  worthy  of  being  practised.  The  statement  will 
be  meaningless,  except  to  those  for  whom  it  is  super- 
fluous. It  is  therefore  essential  to  the  moral  end 
that  in  some  way  or  other  it  be  generally  presenta- 
ble, so  that  its  excellence  shall  appeal  to  some  com- 
mon sense  in  man.  And  again,  be  it  observed,  that 
we  are  demanding  no  mathematical  accuracy.  We 
demand  only  that  the  presentation  shall  be  accurate 
enough  to  let  us  recognise  its  corresponding  fact  in 
life. 

Now  what  is  a  code  of  morals,  and  why  has  the 
world  any  need  of  one  ?  A  code  of  morals  is  a  num- 
ber of  restraining  orders ;  it  rigorously  bids  us  walk 
in  certain  paths.  But  why  ?  What  is  the  use  of 
bidding  us  ?  Because  there  are  a  number  of  other 
paths  that  we  are  naturally  inclined  to  walk  in.  The 
right  path  is  right  because  it  leads  to  the  highest 
kind  of  happiness ;  the  wrong  paths  are  wrong  be- 
cause they  lead  to  lower  kinds  of  happiness.  But 
when  men  choose  vice  instead  of  virtue,  what  is 
happening  ?  They  are  considering  the  lower  or  the 
lesser  happiness  better  than  the  greater  or  the  higher. 
It  is  this  mistake  that  is  the  essence  and  cause  of 
immorality  ;  it  is  this  mistake  that  mankind  is  ever 


THE  PRIZE  OF  LIFE.  43 

inclined  to  make,  and  it  is  only  because  of  this  incli- 
nation that  any  moral  system "  is  of  any  general 
value. 

Were  we  all  naturally  inclined  to  morality,  the 
analysis  of  it,  it  is  true,  might  have  great  specula- 
tive interest ;  but  a  moral  system  would  not  be 
needed  as  it  is  for  a  great  practical  purpose.  The 
law,  as  we  all  know,  has  arisen  because  of  transgres- 
sions, and  the  moralist  has  to  meddle  with  human 
nature  mainly  because  it  is  inconstant  and  corrupted. 
It  is  a  wild  horse  that  has  not  so  much  to  be  broken, 
once  for  all,  as  to  be  driven  and  reined  in  perpetu- 
ally. And  the  art  of  the  moralist  is,  by  opening  the 
mind's  eye  to  the  true  end  of  life,  to  make  us  sharply 
conscious  of  what  we  lose  by  losing  it.  And  the 
men  to  whom  we  shall  chiefly  want  to  present  this 
end  are  not  men,  let  us  remember,  who  desire  to  see 
it,  or  who  will  seek  for  it  of  their  own  accord,  but 
men  who  are  turned  away  from  it,  and  on  whose 
sight  it  must  be  thrust.  It  is  not  the  righteous  but 
the  sinners  that  have  to  be  called  to  repentance.  And 
not  this  only :  not  only  must  the  end  in  question  be 
thus  presentable,  but  when  presented  it  must  be  able  to 
stand  the  inveterate  criticism  of  those  who  fear  being 
allured  by  it,  who  are  content  as  they  are,  and  have 
no  wish  to  be  made  discontented.  These  men  will 
submit  it  to  every  test  by  which  they  may  hope  to 
prove  that  its  attractions  are  delusive.  They  will 


44  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

test  it  with  reason,  as  we  test  a  metal  by  an  acid. 
They  will  ask  what  it  is  based  upon,  and  of  what  it 
is  compounded.  They  will  submit  it  to  an  analysis 
as  merciless  as  that  by  which  their  advisers  have 
dissolved  theism. 

Here  then  is  a  fact  that  all  positive  morality  pre- 
supposes. It  pre-supposes  that  life  by  its  very  na- 
ture contains  the  possibility  in  it  of  some  one  kind  of 
happiness,  which  is  open  to  all  men,  and  which  is 
better  than  all  others.  It  is  sufficiently  presentable 
even  to  those  who  have  not  experienced  it ;  and  its 
excellence  is  not  vaguely  apparent  only,  but  can  be 
exactly  proved  from  obvious  and  acknowledged 
facts.  Further,  this  happiness  must  be  removed 
from  its  alternatives  by  some  very  great  interval. 
The  proudest,  the  serenest,  the  most  successful  life 
of  vice,  must  be  miserable  when  compared  with  the 
most  painful  life  of  virtue,  and  miserable  in  a  very 
high  degree  ;  for  morality  is  momentous  exactly  in 
proportion  to  the  interval  between  the  things  to  be 
gained  and  escaped  by  it.  And  unless  this  interval  be 
a  very  profound  one,  the  language  at  present  current 
as  to  the  importance  of  virtue,  the  dignity  of  life,  and 
the  earnestness  of  the  moral  struggle,  will  be  alto- 
gether overstrained  and  ludicrous. 

Now  is  such  a  happiness  a  reality  or  is  it  a  mytli  ? 
That  is  the  great  question.  Can  human  life,  cut  off 
utterly  from  every  hope  beyond  itself — can  human 


THE  PRIZE  OF  LIFE.  45 

life  supply  it  ?  If  it  cannot,  then  evidently  there 
can  be  no  morality  without  religion.  But  perhaps 
it  can.  Perhaps  life  has  greater  capacities  than  we 
have  hitherto  given  it  credit  for.  Perhaps  this  hap- 
piness may  be  really  close  at  hand  for  each  of  us, 
and  we  have  only  overlooked  it  hitherto  because  it 
was  too  directly  before  our  eyes.  At  all  events, 
wherever  it  is  let  it  be  pointed  out  to  us.  It  is  use- 
less, as  we  have  seen,  if  not  generally  presentable. 
To  those  who  most  need  it,  it  is  useless  until  present- 
ed. Indeed,  until  it  is  presented  we  are  but  acting 
on  the  maxim  of  its  advocates  by  refusing  to  believe 
in  its  existence.  i  No  simplicity  ofmindj  says  Pro- 
fessor Clifford,  '  no  obscurity  of  station,  can  escape 
the  universal  duty  of  questioning  all  that  we  be- 
lieve.' 

The  question,  then,  that  we  want  answered  has  by 
this  time,  I  think,  been  stated  with  sufficient  clear- 
ness, and  its  importance  and  its  legitimacy  been 
placed  beyond  a  doubt.  I  shall  now  go  on  to  ex- 
plain in  detail  how  completely  unsatisfactory  are  the 
answers  that  are  at  present  given  it ;  how  it  is  evaded 
by  some  and  begged  by  others  ;  and  how  those  that 
are  most  plausible  are  really  made  worthless,  by  a 
subtle  but  profound  defect. 

These  answers  divide  themselves  into  two  classes, 
which,  though  invariably  confused  by  those  that 
give  them,  are  in  reality  quite  distinct  and  separa- 


46  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

ble.  Professor  Huxley,  one  of  the  most  vigorous  of 
our  positive  thinkers,  shall  help  us  to  understand 
these.  He  is  going  to  tell  us,  let  us  remember,  about 
the  'highest  good"1 — the  happiness,  in  other  words, 
that  we  have  just  been  discussing — the  secret  of  our 
life's  worth,  and  the  test  of  all  our  conduct.  This 
happiness  he  divides  into  two  kinds.1  He  says  that 
there  are  two  things  that  we  may  mean  when  we  speak 
about  it.  We  may  mean  the  happiness  of  a  society 
of  men,  or  we  may  mean  the  happiness  of  the  mem- 
bers of  that  society.  And  when  we  speak  of  moral- 
ity, we  may  mean  two  things  also ;  and  these  two 
things  must  be  kept  distinct.  We  may  mean  what 
Professor  Huxley  calls  '  social  morality J  and  of  this 
the  test  and  object  is  the  happiness  of  societies ; 
or  we  may  mean  what  he  calls  ''personal  morality,'' 
and  of  this  the  test  and  object  is  the  happiness  of 
individuals.  And  the  answers  wrhich  our  positive 
moralists  make  to  us  divide  themselves  into  two 
classes,  according  to  the  sort  of  happiness  they  re- 
fer to. 

It  is  before  all  things  important  that  this  division 
be  understood,  and  be  kept  quite  clear  in  our  minds, 
if  we  would  see  honestly  what  our  positive  modern 
systems  amount  to.  For  what  makes  them  at  pres- 
ent so  very  hard  to  deal  with,  is  the  fact  that  their 
exponents  are  perpetually  perplexing  themselves 

1  Vide  Nineteenth  Century,  No.  3,  pp.  530,  537. 


THE  PRIZE  OF  LIFE.  47 

between  these  two  classes  of  answers,  first  giving 
one,  and  then  the  other,  and  imagining  that,  by  a 
kind  of  confusion  of  substance,  they  can  both  afford 
solutions  of  the  same  questions.  Thus  they  con- 
tinually speak  of  life  as  though  its  crowning  achieve- 
ment were  some  kind  of  personal  happiness  ;  and 
then  being  asked  to  explain  the  nature  and  basis  of 
this,  they  at  once  shift  their  ground,  and  talk  to  us 
of  the  laws  and  conditions  of  social  happiness.  Pro- 
fessor Huxley  will  again  supply  us  with  a  very  ex- 
cellent example.  He  starts  with  the  thesis  that  both 
sorts  of  morality  are  strong  enough  to  hold  their 
own,  without  supernatural  aid ;  and  when  we  look 
to  see  on  what  ground  he  holds  they  are,  we  find  it 
to  consist  in  the  following  explanation  that  one  is. 
'  GivenJ  he  says,  '  a  society  of  human  beings  under 
certain  circumstances,  and  the  question  wJietJier  a 
particular  action  on  the  part  of  one  of  its  members 
will  tend  to  increase  the  general  happiness  or  not,  is 
a  question  of  natural  knowledge,  and  as  such  is  a 
perfectly  legitimate  subject  of  scientific  inquiry  .  .  . 
If  it  can  be  shown  by  observation  or  experiment, 
tJiat  tJieft,  murder,  and  adultery  do  not  tend  to  di- 
m  htisJi  tlie  Jiappiness  of  society,  then,  in  the  absence 
of  any  but  natural  knowledge,  they  are  not  social 
Immoralities.'1 

Now,  in  the  above  passage  we  have  at  least  one 
thing.     We  have  a  short  epitome  of  one  of  those 


48  .18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

classes  of  answers  that  our  positive  moralists  are 
offering  us.  It  is  with  this  class  that  I  shall  deal  in 
the  following  chapter  ;  and  point  out  as  briefly  as 
may  be  its  complete  irrelevance.  After  that,  I  shall 
go  on  to  the  other. 


CHAPTER  III. 

SOCIOLOGY  AS   THE  FOUNDATION   OF   MOKALITY. 

SOCIETY,  says  Professor  Clifford,  is  the  highest  of 
all  organisms  ; l  and  its  organic  nature,  he  tells  us,  is 
one  of  those  great  facts  which  our  own  generation 
has  been  the  first  to  state  rationally.  It  is  our  un- 
derstanding of  this  that  enables  us  to  supply  morals 
with  a  positive  basis.  It  is,  he  proceeds,  because 
society  is  organic,  '  that  actions  which,  as  in- 
dividual, are  insignificant,  are  massed  together 
into  ....  important  movements.  Co-operation  or 
band- work  is  the  life  of  it?  And  'it  is  the  practice 
of  band-work,''  he  adds,  that,  unknown  till  lately 
though  its  nature  was  to  us,  has  so  moulded  man  as 
'  to  create  in  him  two  specially  human  faculties,  the 
conscience  and  the  intellect ; '  of  which  the  former, 
we  are  told,  gives  us  the  desire  for  the  good,  and  the 
latter  instructs  us  how  to  attain  this  desire  by  action. 
So  too  Professor  Huxley,  once  more  to  recur  to  him, 
says  that  that  state  of  man  would  be  '  a  true  civitns 
Dei,  in  which  each  man's  moral  faculty  shall  be 
such  as  leads  him  to  control  all  those  desires  which 
run  counter  to  the  good  of  mankind.1  And  J.  S. 

1  Vide  Nineteenth  Century,  October,  1877. 
4  49 


50  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

Mill,  whose  doubts  as  to  the  value  of  life  we  have 
already  dwelt  upon,  professed  to  have  at  last  satis- 
fied himself  by  a  precisely  similar  answer.  He  had 
never  '  wavered  in  the  convict  ion,'9  he  tells  us,  even 
all  through  his  perplexity,  that,  if  life  had  any  value 
at  all,  l  happiness1  was  its  one  'end,'  and  the  'test 
of  its  rule  of  conduct;''  but  he  now  thought  that 
this  end  was  to  be  attained  by  not  making  it  the 
direct  end,  but  *  by  fixing  the  mind  on  some  object 
other  than  one's  own  happiness ;  ontheJiappiness  of 
others — on  the  improvement  of  mankind?  The  same 
thing  is  being  told  us  on  all  sides,  and  in  countless 
ways.  The  common  name  for  this  theory  is  Utili- 
tarianism ;  and  its  great  boast,  and  its  special  pro- 
fessed strength,  is  that  it  gives  morals  a  positive 
basis  in  the  acknowledged  science  of  sociology. 
"Whether  sociology  can  really  supply  such  a  basis  is 
what  we  now  have  to  enquire.  There  are  many 
practical  rules  for  which  it  no  doubt  can  do  so  ;  but 
will  these  rules  correspond  with  what  we  mean  by 
morals  ? 

Now  the  province  of  the  sociologist,  within  certain 
limits,  is  clear  enough.  His  study  is  to  the  social 
body  what  the  study  of  the  physician  is  to  the  indi- 
vidual body.  It  is  the  study  of  human  action  as 
productive,  or  non-productive,  of  some  certain  gen- 
eral good.  But  here  comes  the  point  at  issue — What 
is  this  general  good,  and  what  is  included  by  it? 


SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  MORALITY.     51 

The  positive  school  contend  that  it  is  general  happi- 
ness ;  and  there,  they  say,  is  the  answer  to  the  great 
question — What  is  the  test  of  conduct,  and  the  true 
end  of  life  ?  But  though,  as  we  shall  see  in  another 
moment,  there  is  some  plausibility  in  this,  there  is 
really  nothing  in  it  of  the  special  answer  we  want. 
Our  question  is,  What  is  the  true  happiness  ?  And 
what  is  the  answer  thus  far  ? — That  the  true  happi- 
ness is  general  happiness  ;  that  it  is  the  happiness  of 
men  in  societies  ;  that  it  is  happiness  equally  dis- 
tributed. But  this  avails  us  nothing.  The  coveted 
happiness  is  still  a  locked  casket.  We  know  nothing 
as  yet  of  its  contents.  A  happy  society  neither  does 
nor  can  mean  anything  but  a  number  of  happy  indi- 
viduals, so  organised  that  their  individual  happiness 
is  secured  to  them.  But  what  do  the  individuals 
want  ?  Before  we  can  try  to  secure  it  for  them,  we 
must  know  that.  Granted  that  we  know  what  will 
make  the  individuals  happy,  then  we  shall  know 
what  will  make  society  happy.  And  then  social 
morality  will  be,  as  Professor  Huxley  says,  a  per- 
fectly legitimate  subject  of  scientific  enquiry — then, 
but  not  till  then.  But  this  is  what  the  positive 
school  are  perpetually  losing  sight  of ;  and  the  rea- 
son of  the  confusion  is  not  far  to  seek. 

Within  certain  limits,  it  is  quite  true,  the  general 
good  is  a  sufficiently  obvious  matter,  and  beyond  the 
reach  of  any  rational  dispute.  There  are,  therefore, 


52  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

certain  rules  with  regard  to  conduct  that  we  can 
arrive  at  and  justify  by  strictly  scientific  methods. 
We  can  demonstrate  that  there  are  certain  actions 
which  we  must  never  tolerate,  and  which  we  must 
join  together,  as  best  we  may,  to  suppress.  Actions, 
for  instance,  that  would  tend  to  generate  pestilence, 
or  to  destroy  our  good  faith  in  our  fellows,  or  to 
render  our  lives  and  property  insecure,  are  actions 
the  badness  of  which  can  be  scientifically  verified. 

But  the  general  good  by  which  these  actions  are 
tested  is  something  quite  distinct  from  happiness, 
though  it  undoubtedly  has  a  close  connection  with 
it.  It  is  no  kind  of  happiness,  high  or  low,  in  parti- 
cular ;  it  is  simply  those  negative  conditions  required 
equally  by  every  kind.  If  we  are  to  be  happy  in 
any  way,  no  matter  what,  we  must  of  course  have 
our  lives,  and,  next  to  our  lives,  our  health  and  our 
possessions  secured  to  us.  But  to  secure  us  these 
does  not  secure  us  happiness.  It  simply  leaves  us 
free  to  secure  it,  if  we  can,  for  ourselves.  Once  let 
us  have  some  common  agreement  as  to  what  this 
happiness  is,  we  may  then  be  able  to  formulate  other 
rules  for  attaining  it.  But  in  the  absence  of  any 
such  agreement,  the  only  possible  aim  of  social  mo- 
rality, the  only  possible  meaning  of  the  general  good, 
is  not  any  kind  or  any  kinds  of  happiness,  but  the 
security  of  those  conditions  without  which  all  hap- 
piness would  be  impossible. 


SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  MORALITY.      53 

Suppose  the  human  race  were  a  set  of  canaries 
in  a  cage,  and  that  we  were  in  grave  doubt  as  to 
what  seed  to  give  them — hemp-seed,  rape-seed,  or 
canary-seed,  or  all  three  mixed  in  certain  pro- 
portions. That  would  exactly  represent  the  state 
of  our  case  thus  far.  There  is  the  question  that 
we  want  the  positive  school  to  answer.  It  is  surely 
evident  that,  in  this  perplexity,  it  is  beside  the 
point  to  tell  us  that  the  birds  must  not  peck  each 
other's  eyes  out,  and  that  they  must  all  have 
access  to  the  trough  that  we  are  ignorant  how  to 
fill. 

The  fault  then,  so  continually  committed  by  the 
positive  school,  is  this.  They  confuse  the  negative 
conditions  of  happiness  with  the  positive  materials 
of  it.  Professor  Huxley,  in  a  passage  I  have  already 
quoted,  is  caught,  so  to  speak,  in  the  very  act  of 
committing  it.  '  Tlieft,  murder,  and  adultery  J  all 
these  three,  it  will  be  remembered,  he  classes  to- 
gether, and  seems  to  think  that  they  stand  upon  the 
same  footing.  But  from  what  has  just  been  pointed 
out,  it  is  plain  that  they  do  not  do  so.  We  condemn 
theft  and  murder  for  one  reason.  We  condemn  adul- 
tery for  quite  another.  We  condemn  the  former 
because  they  are  incompatible  with  any  form  of  hap- 
piness. We  condemn  the  latter  because  it  is  the 
supposed  destruction  of  one  particular  form  ;  or  the 
substitution,  rather,  of  a  form  supposed  to  be  less 


54  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

complete,  for  another  form  supposed  to  be  more 
complete.  If  the  '  higJiest  good,'  if  the  best  kind  of 
happiness,  be  the  end  we  are  in  search  of,  the  truths 
of  sociology  will  help  us  but  a  very  short  way  to- 
wards it.  By  the  practice  of  '  band-work '  alone  we 
shall  never  learn  to  construct  a  'true  Civitas  Dei.' 
Band-work  with  the  same  perfection  may  be  prac- 
tised for  opposite  ends.  Send  an  army  in  a  just  war 
or  an  unjust  one,  in  either  case  it  will  need  the  same 
discipline.  There  must  be  order  amongst  thieves,  as 
well  as  amongst  honest  men.  There  can  be  an 
orderly  brothel  as  well  as  an  orderly  nunnery,  and 
all  order  rests  on  co-operation.  We  presume  co- 
operation. We  require  an  end  for  which  to  co-op- 
erate. 

I  have  already  compared  the  science  of  sociology 
to  that  of  medicine  ;  and  the  comparison  will  again 
be  a  very  instructive  one.  The  aim  of  both  sciences 
is  to  produce  health  ;  and  the  relation  of  health  to 
happiness  is  in  both  cases  the  same.  It  is  an  im- 
portant condition  of  the  full  enjoyment  of  anything : 
but  it  will  by  no  means  of  itself  give  or  guide  us  to 
the  best  thing.  A  man  may  be  in  excellent  health, 
and  yet,  if  he  be  prudent,  be  leading  a  degrading 
life.  So,  too,  may  a  society.  The  Cities  of  the  Plain 
may,  for  all  we  know  to  the  contrary,  have  been  in 
excellent  social  health  ;  indeed,  there  is  every  reason 
to  believe  they  were.  They  were,  apparently,  to  a 


SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  MORALITY.     55 

high  degree  strong  and  prosperous  ;  and  the  sort  of 
happiness  that  their  citizens  set  most  store  by  was 
only  too  generally  attainable.  There  were  not  ten 
men  to  be  found  in  them  by  whom  the  highest  good 
had  not  been  realised. 

There  are,  however,  two  suppositions,  on  which 
the  general  good,  or  the  health  of  the  social  organ- 
ism, can  be  given  a  more  definite  meaning,  and 
made  in  some  sense  an  adequate  test  of  conduct. 
And  one  or  other  of  these  suppositions  is  appar- 
ently always  lurking  in  the  positivist  mind.  But 
though,  when  unexpressed,  and  only  barely  assent- 
ed to,  they  may  seem  to  be  true,  their  entire  false- 
hood will  appear  the  moment  they  are  distinctly 
stated. 

One  of  these  suppositions  is,  that  for  human  hap- 
piness health  is  alone  requisite — health  in  the  social 
organism  including  sufficient  wealth  and  freedom ; 
and  that  man's  life,  whenever  it  is  not  interfered 
with,  will  be  moral,  dignified,  and  delightful  natur- 
ally, no  matter  how  he  lives  it.  But  this  supposi- 
tion, from  a  moralist,  is  of  course  nonsense.  For, 
were  it  true,  as  we  have  just  seen,  Sodom  might  have 
been  as  moral  as  the  tents  of  Abraham  ;  and  in  a 
perfect  state  there  would  be  a  fitting  place  for  both. 
The  social  organism  indeed,  in  its  highest  state  of 
perfection,  would  manifest  the  richest  variety  in  the 
development  of  such  various  parts.  It  might  con- 


56  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

sist  of  a  number  of  motley  communes 1  of  monoga- 
mists and  of  free-lovers,  of  ascetics  and  sybarites,  of 
saints  and  naiStpaGrciL — each  of  them  being  stones 
in  this  true  Civitas  Dei,  this  holy  city  of  God.  Of 
course  it  may  be  contended  that  this  state  of  things 
would  be  desirable  ;  that,  however,  is  quite  a  differ- 
ent question.  But  whatever  else  it  was,  it  would 
certainly  not  be  moral,  in  any  sense  in  which  the 
word  has  yet  been  used. 

The  second  supposition  I  spoke  of,  though  less 
openly  absurd  than  this  one,  is  really  quite  as  false. 
It  consists  of  a  vague  idea  that,  for  some  reason  or 
other,  happiness  can  never  be  distributed  in  an 
equal  measure  to  all,  unless  it  be  not  only  equal  in 
degree  but  also  the  same  in  kind  ;  and  that  the  one 
kind  that  can  be  thus  distributed  is  a  kind  that  is  in 
harmony  with  our  conceptions  of  moral  excellence. 
Now  this  is  indeed  so  far  true,  that  there  are  doubt- 
less certain  kinds  of  happiness  which,  if  enjoyed  at 
all,  can  be  enjoyed  by  the  few  alone  ;  and  that  the 

1  '  As  Mr.  Spencer  points  out,  society  docs  not  resemble  those  organ- 
isms which  are  so  highly  centralised  that  the  unity  of  the  whole  is  tht 
important  thing,  and  every  part  must  die  if  separated  from  the  rest ; 
but  rather  those  that  witt  bear  separation  and  reunion  ;  because,  although 
there  is  a  certain  union  and  organisation  of  the  parts  in  regard  to  one 
another,  yet  the  far  more  important  fact  is  the  life  of  the  parts  separ- 
ately. The  true  health  of  society  depends  upon  the  communes,  tJie  vil- 
lages and  townships,  infinitely  more  than  on  the  form  and  pageantry  of 
a/i  imperial  government.  If  in  them  there  is  band-work,  union  for  a 
common  effort,  converse  in  the  working  out  of  a  common  thought,  there 
tite  Republic  is.' — Professor  Clifford,  Nineteenth  Century,  October,  1877. 


SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  MORALITY.     57 

conditions  under  which  alone  the  few  can  enjoy 
them  disturb  the  conditions  of  all  happiness  for  the 
many.  The  general  good,  therefore,  gives  us  at  once 
a  test  by  which  such  kinds  of  happiness  can  be  con- 
demned. But  to  eliminate  these  will  by  no  means 
leave  us  a  residue  of  virtue  ;  for  these  so  far  from 
being  co-extensive  with  moral  evil,  do  in  reality  lie 
only  on  the  borders  of  it ;  and  the  condemnation 
attached  to  them  is  a  legal  rather  than  a  moral  one. 
It  is  based,  that  is,  not  so  much  on  the  kind  of  hap- 
piness itself  as  on  the  circumstances  under  which  we 
are  at  present  obliged  to  seek  it.  Thus  the  practice 
of  seduction  may  be  said  to  be  condemned  suffi- 
ciently by  the  misery  brought  by  it  to  its  victims, 
and  its  victims'  families.  But  suppose  the  victims 
are  willing,  and  the  families  complacent,  this  ground 
of  condemnation  goes  ;  though  in  the  eye  of  the 
moralist,  matters  in  this  last  will  be  far  worse  than 
in  the  former.  It  is  therefore  quite  a  mistake  to  say 
that  the  kind  of  happiness  which  it  is  the  end  of  life 
to  realise  is  defined  or  narrowed  down  appreciably 
by  the  fact  that  it  is  a  general  end.  Yice  can  be 
enjoyed  in  common,  just  as  well  as  virtue ;  nor  if 
wisely  regulated  will  it  exhaust  the  tastes  that  it  ap- 
peals to.  Regulated  with  equal  skill,  and  with  equal 
far-sightedness,  it  will  take  its  place  side  by  side  with 
virtue;  nor  will  sociology  or  social  morality  give 
us  any  reason  for  preferring  the  one  to  the  other. 


58  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING* 

We  may  observe  accordingly,  that  if  happiness  of 
some  certain  kind  be  the  moral  test,  what  Professor 
Huxley  calls  '  social  morality'1 — the  rule  that  is,  for 
producing  the  negative  conditions  of  happiness,  it  is 
not  in  itself  morality  at  all.  It  may  indeed  become 
so,  when  the  consciousness  that  we  are  conforming 
to  it  becomes  one  of  the  factors  of  our  own  personal 
happiness.  It  then  suffers  a  kind  of  apotheosis.  It 
is  taken  up  into  ourselves,  and  becomes  part  and  par- 
cel of  our  own  personal  morality.  But  it  then  be- 
comes quite  a  different  matter,  as  we  shall  see  very 
shortly ;  and  ev.en  then  it  supplies  us  with  but  a  very 
small  part  of  the  answer. 

Thus  far  what  has  been  made  plain  is  this.  Gen- 
eral, or  social  happiness,  unless  explained  farther,  is 
simply  for  moral  purposes  an  unmeaning  phrase.  It 
evades  the  whole  question  we  are  asking ;  for  happi- 
ness is  no  more  differentiated  by  saying  that  it  is  gen- 
eral, than  food  is  by  saying  that  everyone  at  a  table 
is  eating  it ;  or  than  a  language  is  by  saying  that 
every  one  in  a  room  is.  talking  it.  The  social  happi- 
ness of  all  of  us  means  nothing  but  the  personal  hap- 
piness of  each  of  us  ;  and  if  social  happiness  have 
any  single  meaning — in  other  words,  if  it  be  a  test  of 
morals — it  must  postulate  a  personal  happiness  of 
some  hitherto  unexplained  kind.  Else  sociology  will 
be  subsidiary  to  nothing  but  individual  license  ;  gen- 
eral law  will  be  but  the  protection  of  individual  law- 


SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  MORALITY.     59 

lessness ;  and  tlie  completest  social  morality  but  the 
condition  of  the  completest  personal  un-morality. 
The  social  organism  we  may  compare  to  a  yew-tree. 
Science  will  explain  to  us  how  it  has  grown  up  from 
the  ground,  and  how  all  its  twigs  must  have  fitting 
room  to  expand  in.  It  will  not  show  us  how  to  clip 
the  yew-tree  into  a  peacock.  Morality,  it  is  true, 
must  rest  ultimately  on  the  proved  facts  of  sociology ; 
and  this  is  not  only  true  but  evident.  But  it  rests 
upon  them  as  a  statue  rests  upon  its  pedestal,  and  the 
same  pedestal  will  support  an  Athene"  or  a  Priapus. 

The  matter,  however,  is  not  yet  altogether  disposed 
of.  The  type  of  personal  happiness  that  social  mo- 
rality postulates,  as  a  whole,  we  have  still  to  seek  for. 
But  a  part  of  it,  as  I  just  pointed  out,  will,  beyond 
doubt,  be  a  willing  obedience  by  each  to  the  rules 
that  make  it  in  its  entirety  within  the  reach  of  all. 
About  this  obedience,  however,  there  is  a  certain  thing 
to  remember :  it  must  be  willing,  not  enforced.  The 
laws  will  of  course  do  all  they  can  to  enforce  it ;  but 
not  only  can  they  never  do  this  completely,  but  even 
if  they  could,  they  would  not  produce  morality. 
Conduct  which,  if  willing,  we  should  call  highly 
moral,  we  shall,  if  enforced  only,  call  nothing  more 
than  legal.  We  do  not  call  a  wild  bear  tame  because 
it  is  so  well  caged  that  there  is  no  fear  of  its  attack- 
ing us  ;  nor  do  we  call  a  man  good  because,  though 
his  desires  are  evil,  we  have  made  him  afraid  to  grat- 


60  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

ify  them.  Further,  it  is  not  enough  that  the  obedi- 
ence in  question  be  willing  in  the  sense  that  it  does 
not  give  us  pain.  If  it  is  to  be  a  moral  quality, 
it  must  also  give  us  positive  pleasure.  Indeed,  it 
must  not  so  much  be  obedience  to  the  law  as  an  im- 
passioned co-operation  with  it. 

Now  this,  if  producible,  even  though  no  further 
moral  aim  was  connected  with  it,  would  undoubted- 
ly be  of  itself  a  moral  element.  Suppose  two  pigs, 
for  instance,  had  only  a  single  wallo  wing-place,  and 
each  would  like  naturally  to  wallow  in  it  for  ever. 
If  each  pig  in  turn  were  to  rejoice  to  make  room  for 
his  brother,  and  were  consciously  to  regulate  his  de- 
light in  becoming  filthy  himself  by  an  equal  delight 
in  seeing  his  brother  becoming  filthy  also,  we  should 
doubtless  here  be  in  the  presence  of  a  certain  moral 
element.  And  though  this,  in  a  human  society,  might 
not  carry  us  so  far  as  we  require  to  be  carried,  it  would, 
without  doubt,  if  producible,  carry  us  a  certain  way. 
The  question  is,  Is  this  moral  element,  this  impas- 
sioned and  unselfish  co-operation  with  the  social  law, 
producible,  in  the  absence  of  any  farther  end  to  which 
the  social  law  is  to  be  subordinate  ?  The  positive 
school  apparently  think  it  is  ;  and  this  opinion  has 
a  seeming  foundation  in  fact.  We  will  therefore 
carefully  examine  what  this  foundation  is,  and  see 
how  far  it  is  really  able  to  support  the  weight  that 
is  laid  upon  it. 


SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  MORALITY.      61 

That  fact,  in  itself  a  quite  undoubted  one,  is  the 
possession  by  man  of  a  certain  special  and  important 
feeling,  which,  viewed  from  its  passive  side,  we  call 
sympathy,  and  from  its  active  side,  benevolence.  It 
exists  in  various  degrees  in  different  people,  but  to 
some  degree  or  other  it  probably  exists  in  all.  Most 
people,  for  instance,  if  they  hear  an  amusing  story, 
at  once  itch  to  tell  it  to  an  appreciative  friend  ;  for 
they  find  that  the  amusement,  if  shared,  is  doubled. 
Two  epicures  together,  for  the  same  reason,  will  en- 
joy a  dinner  better  than  if  they  each  dined  singly. 
In  such  cases  the  enjoyment  of  another  plays  the 
part  of  a  reflector,  which  throws  one's  own  enjoy- 
ment back  on  one.  Nor  is  this  all.  It  is  not  only 
true  that  we  often  desire  others  to  be  pleased  with 
us ;  we  often  desire  others  to  be  pleased  instead  of 
us.  For  instance,  if  there  be  but  one  easy  chair"  in  a 
room,  one  man  will  often  give  it  up  to  another,  and 
prefer  himself  to  stand,  or  perhaps  sit  on  the  table. 
To  contemplate  discomfort  is  often  more  annoying 
than  to  suffer  it. 

This  is  the  fact  in  human  nature  on  which  the  pos- 
itive school  rely  for  their  practical  motive  power.  It 
is  this  sympathy  and  benevolence  that  is  the  secret 
of  the  social  union  ;  and  it  is  by  these  that  the  rules 
of  social  morality  are  to  be  absorbed  and  attracted 
into  ourselves,  and  made  the  directors  of  all  our  other 
impulses. 


62  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

The  feelings,  however,  that  are  thus  relied  on  will 
be  found,  on  consideration,  to  be  altogether  inade- 
quate. They  are  undoubted  facts,  it  is  true,  and  are 
ours  by  the  very  constitution  of  our  nature  ;  but  they 
do  not  possess  the  importance  that  is  assigned  to 
them,  and  their  limits  are  soon  reached.  They  are 
unequal  in  their  distribution ;  they  are  partial  and 
capricious  in  their  action  ;  and  they  are  disturbed 
and  counterbalanced  by  the  opposite  impulse  of  self- 
ishness, which  is  just  as  much  a  part  of  our  nature, 
and  which  is  just  as  generally  distributed.  It  must 
be  a  very  one-sided  view  of  the  case  that  will  lead  us 
to  deny  this  ;  and  by  such  eclectic  methods  of  obser- 
vation we  can  support  any  theory  we  please.  Thus 
there  are  many  stories  of  unselfish  heroism  displayed 
by  rough  men  on  occasions  such  as  shipwrecks,  and 
displayed  .quite  spontaneously.  And  did  we  confine 
our  attention  to  this  single  set  of  examples,  we  might 
naturally  conclude  that  we  had  here  the  real  nature 
of  man  bursting  forth  in  all  its  intense  entirety — a 
constant  but  suppressed  force,  which  we  shall  learn 
by-and-by  to  utilise  generally.  But  if  we  extend  our 
observations  a  little  farther,  we  shall  find  another  set 
of  examples,  in  which  selfishness  is  just  as  predomi- 
nant as  unselfishness  was  in  the  first  set.  The  sailor, 
for  instance,  who  might  struggle  to  save  a  woman  on 
a  sinking  ship,  will  trample  her  to  death  to  escape 
from  a  burning  theatre.  And  if  we  will  but  honestly 


SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  MORALITY.      63 

estimate  the  composite  nature  of  man,  we  shall  find 
that  the  sailor,  in  this  latter  case,  embodies  a  ten- 
dency far  commoner,  and  far  more  to  be  counted  on, 
than  he  does  in  the  former.  No  fair  student  of  life 
or  history  will,  I  think,  be  able  to  deny  this.  The 
lives  of  the  world's  greatest  men,  be  they  Goethes  or 
Napoleons,  will  be  the  first  to  show  us  that  it  is  so. 
Whilst  the  world's  best  men,  who  have  been  most 
successful  in  conquering  their  selfish  nature,  will  be 
the  first  to  bear  witness  to  the  persistent  strength 
of  it. 

But  even  giving  these  unpromising  facts  the  least 
weight  possible,  the  case  will  practically  be  not 
much  mended.  The  unselfish  impulses,  let  them  be 
diffused  never  so  widely,  will  be  found,  as  a  general 
rule,  to  be  very  limited  in  power  ;  and  to  be  intense 
only  for  short  periods,  and  under  exceptional  cir- 
cumstances. They  are  intense  only — in  the  absence 
of  any  further  motive — when  the  thing  to  be  won  for 
another  becomes  invested  for  the  moment  with  an 
abnormal  value,  and  the  thing  to  be  lost  by  oneself 
becomes  abnormally  depreciated  ;  when  all  interme- 
diate possibilities  are  suddenly  swept  away  from  us, 
and  the  only  surviving  alternatives  are  shame  and 
heroism.  But  this  never  happens,  except  in  the  case 
of  great  catastrophes,  of  such,  for  instance,  as  a  ship- 
wreck ;  and  thus  the  only  conditions  under  which  an 
impassioned  unselfishness  can  be  counted  on,  are 


64  IS  LIFE  WOU Til 

amongst  the  first  conditions  that  we  trust  to  progress 
to  eliminate.  The  common  state  of  life,  then,  when 
the  feelings  are  in  this  normal  state  of  tension,  is  all 
that  in  this  connection  we  can  really  be  concerned  in 
dealing  with.  And  there,  unselfishness,  though  as 
sure  a  fact  as  selfishness,  is,  spontaneously  and  apart 
from  a  further  motive,  essentially  unequal  to  the 
work  it  is  asked  to  do.  Thus,  though  as  I  observed 
just  now,  a  man  .may  often  prefer  to  sit  on  a  table 
and  give  up  the  arm-chair  to  a  friend,  there  are  other 
times  when  he  will  be  very  loth  to  do  so.  He  will 
do  so  when  the  pleasure  of  looking  at  comfort  is 
greater  than  the  pleasure  of  feeling  it.  And  in  cer- 
tain states  of  mind  and  body  this  is  very  often  the 
case.  But  let  him  be  sleepy  and  really  in  need  of 
rest,  the  selfish  impulse  will  at  once  eclipse  the  un- 
selfish, and,  unless  under  the  action  of  some  alien 
motive,  he  will  keep  the  arm-chair  for  himself.  So, 
too,  in  the  case  of  the  two  epicures,  if  there  be  suffi- 
cient of  the  best  dainties  for  both,  each  will  feel  that 
it  is  so  much  the  better.  But  whenever  the  dainties 
in  question  cannot  be  divided,  it  will  be  the  tendency 
of  each  to  take  them  furtively  for  himself. 

And  when  we  come  to  the  conditions  of  happiness 
the  matter  will  be  just  the  same.  If  without  incom- 
moding ourselves  we  can,  as  Professor  Huxley  says, 
repress  iall  those  desires  whicJi  run  counter  to  the 
good  of  mankind,'  we  shall  no  doubt  all  willingly  do 


SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  MORALITY.     65 

so  ;  only  in  that  case  little  more  need  be  said.  The 
'Civitas  DeV  we  are  promised  may  be  left  to  take 
care  of  itself,  and  it  will  doubtless  very  soon  begin 
'  to  rise  like  an  exhalation.'1  But  if  this  self -repres- 
sion be  a  matter  of  great  difficulty,  and  one  requir- 
ing a  constant  struggle  on  our  part,  it  will  be  need- 
ful for  us  to  intensely  realise,  when  we  abstain  from 
any  action,  that  the  happiness  it  would  take  from 
others  will  be  far  greater  than  the  happiness  it 
would  give  to  ourselves.  Suppose,  for  instance,  a 
man  were  in  love  with  his  friend's  wife,  and  had  en- 
gaged on  a  certain  night  to  take  her  to  the  theatre. 
He  would  instantly  give  the  engagement  up  could  he 
know  that  the  people  in  the  gallery  would  be  burnt 
to  death  if  he  did  not.  He  would  certainly  not  give 
it  up  because  by  the  sight  of  his  proceedings  the 
moral  tone  of  the  stalls  might  be  infinitesimally 
lowered ;  still  less  would  he  do  so  because  another 
wife's  husband  might  be  made  infinitely  jealous. 
-Whenever  we  give  up  any  source  of  personal  happi- 
ness for  the  sake  of  the  happiness  of  the  community 
at  large,  the  two  kinds  of  happiness  have  to  be 
weighed  together  in  a  balance.  But  the  latter,  ex- 
cept in  very  few  cases,  is  at  a  great  disadvantage : 
only  a  part  of  it,  so  to  speak,  can  be  got  into  the 
scale.  What  adds  to  my  sense  of  pleasure  in  the 
proportion  of  a  million  pounds  may  be  only  taxing 
society  in  the  proportion  of  half  a  farthing  a  head. 
5 


66  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LI  VINO  f 

Unselfishness  with  regard  to  society  is  thus  essen- 
tially a  different  thing  from  unselfishness  with  re- 
gard to  an  individual.  In  the  latter  case  the  things 
to  be  weighed  together  are  commensurate  :  not  so  is 
the  former.  In  the  latter  case,  as  we  have  seen,  an 
impassioned  self-devotion  may  be  at  times  produced 
by  the  sudden  presentation  to  a  man  of  two  extreme 
alternatives ;  but  in  the  former  case  such  alternatives 
are  not  presentable.  I  may  know  that  a  certain  line 
of  conduct  will  on  the  one  hand  give  me  great  pleas- 
ure, and  that  on  the  other  hand,  if  it  were  practised 
by  everyone,  it  would  produce  much  general  mis- 
chief ;  but  I  shall  know  that  my  practising  it,  will, 
as  a  fact,  be  hardly  felt  at  all  by  the  community,  or 
at  all  events  only  in  a  very  small  degree.  And  there- 
fore my  choice  is  not  that  of  the  sailor's  in  the  ship- 
wreck. It  does  not  lie  between  saving  my  life  at  the 
expense  of  a  woman's,  or  saving  a  woman's  life  at 
the  expense  of  mine.  It  lies  rather,  as  it  were,  be- 
tween letting  her  lose  her  ear-ring  and  breaking  my. 
own  arm. 

It  will  appear,  therefore,  that  the  general  condi- 
tions of  an  entirely  undefined  happiness  form  an 
ideal  utterly  unfitted  to  counterbalance  individual 
temptation  or  to  give  even  willingness,  let  alone 
ardour,  to  the  self-denials  that  are  required  of  us. 
In  the  first  place  the  conditions  are  so  vague  that 
even  in  the  extremest  cases  the  individual  will  find 


SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  MORALITY.      67 

it  difficult  to  realise  that  he  is  appreciably  disturb- 
ing them.  And  in  the  second  place,  until  he  knows 
that  the  happiness  in  question  is  something  of  ex- 
treme value  he  will  be  unable  to  feel  much  ardour  in 
helping  to  make  it  possible.  If  we  knew  that  the 
social  organism  in  its  state  of  completest  health  ha.d 
no  higher  pleasure  than  sleep  and  eating,  the  cause 
of  its  completest  health  would  hardly  excite  enthu- 
siasm. And  even  if  we  did  not  rebel  against  any 
sacrifices  for  so  poor  a  result  as  this,  we  should  at 
the  best  be  resigned  rather  than  blest  in  making 
them.  The  nearest  approach  to  a  moral  end  that  the 
science  of  sociology  will  of  itself  supply  to  us  is  an 
end  that,  in  all  probability,  men  will  not  follow  at  all, 
or  that  will  produce  in  them,  if  they  do,  no  happier 
state  than  a  passionless  and  passive  acquiescence.  If 
we  want  anything  more  than  this  we  must  deal  with 
happiness  itself,  not  with  the  negative  conditions  of 
it.  We  must  discern  the  highest  good  that  is  within 
the  reach  of  each  of  us,  and  this  may  perhaps  sup- 
ply us  with  a  motive  for  endeavouring  to  secure  the 
same  blessing  for  all.  But  the  matter  depends  en- 
tirely on  what  this  highest  good  is — on  the  end  to 
which,  given  the  social  health,  the  social  health  will 
be  directed. 

The  real  answer  to  this  question  can  be  given,  as  I 
have  said  before,  in  terms  of  the  individual  only. 
Social  happiness  is  a  mere  set  of  ciphers  till  the  unit 


68  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING* 

of  personal  happiness  is  placed  before  it.  A  man's 
happiness  may  of  course  depend  on  other  beings,  but 
still  it  is  none  the  less  contained  in  himself.  If  our 
greatest  delight  were  to  see  each  other  dance  the  can- 
can, then  it  might  be  morality  for  us  all  to  dance. 
None  the  less  would  this  be  a  happy  world,  not  be- 
cause we  were  all  dancing,  but  because  we  each  en- 
joyed the  sight  of  such  a  spectacle.  Many  young 
officers  take  intense  pride  in  their  regiments,  and  the 
character  of  such  regiments  may  in  a  certain  sense 
be  called  a  corporate  thing.  But  it  depends  entirely 
on  the  personal  character  of  their  members,  and  all 
that  the  phrase  really  indicates  is  that  a  set  of  men 
take  pleasure  in  similar  things.  Thus  it  is  the  boast 
of  one  young  officer  that  the  members  of  his  regiment 
all  spend  too  much,  of  another  that  they  all  drink 
too  much,  of  another  that  they  are  distinguished  for 
their  high  rank,  and  of  another  that  they  are  distin- 
guished for  the  lowness  of  their  sensuality.  What 
differentiates  one  regiment  from  another  is  first  and 
before  all  things  some  personal  source  of  happiness 
common  to  all  its  members. 

And  as  it  is  with  the  character  of  a  regiment,  so 
too  is  it  with  the  character  of  life  in  general.  When 
we  say  that  Humanity  may  become  a  glorious  thing 
as  a  whole,  we  must  mean  that  each  man  may  attain 
some  positive  glory  as  an  individual.  What  shall  I 
get  2  and  I  ?  and  I  \  and  I  ?  What  do  you  offer  me  ? 


SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  MORALITY.      69 

and  me  ?  and  me  ?  This  is  the  first  question  that  the 
common  sense  of  mankind  asks.  '  You  must  promise 
something  to  each  of  us,"*  it  says,  '•or  very  certainly 
you  will  be  able  to  promise  nothing  to  all  of  us.' 
There  is  no  real  escape  in  saying  that  we  must  all 
work  for  one  another,  and  that  our  happiness  is  to  be 
found  in  that.  The  question  merely  confronts  us 
with  two  other  facets  of  itself.  What  sort  of  happi- 
ness shall  I  secure  for  others  ?  and  what  sort  of  hap- 
piness will  others  secure  for  me  ?  What  will  it  be 
like  ?  Will  it  be  worth  having  ?  In  the  positivist 
Utopia,  we  are  told,  each  man's  happiness  is  bound 
up  in  the  happiness  of  all  the  rest,  and  is  thus  infi- 
nitely intensified.  All  mankind  are  made  a  mighty 
whole,  by  the  fusing  power  of  benevolence.  Benev- 
olence, however,  means  simply  the  wishing  that  our 
neighbours  were  happy,  the  helping  to  make  them 
so,  and  lastly  the  being  glad  that  they  are  so.  But 
happiness  must  plainly  be  something  besides  benev- 
olence ;  else,  if  I  know  that  a  man's  highest  happi- 
ness is  in  knowing  that  others  are  happy,  all  I  shall 
try  to  procure  for  others  is  the  knowledge  that  I  am 
happy  ;  and  thus  the  Utopian  happiness  would  be  ex- 
pressed completely  in  the  somewhat  homely  formula, 
'/  am  so  glad  that  you  are  glad  that  I  am  glad? 
But  this  is,  of  course,  not  enough.  All  this  gladness 
must  be  about  something  besides  itself.  Our  good 
wishes  for  our  neighbours  must  have  some  farther 


70  fS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

content  than  that  they  shall  wish  us  well  in  return. 
What  I  wish  them  and  what  they  wish  me  must  be 
something  that  both  they  and  I,  each  of  us,  take  de- 
light in  for  ourselves.  It  will  certainly  be  no  delight 
to  men  to  procure  for  others  what  they  will  take  no 
delight  in  themselves,  if  procured  by  others  for  them. 
''For  a  joyful  life,  that  is  to  say  a  pleasant  life,'  as 
Sir  Thomas  More  pithily  puts  it,  'is  either  evil;  and 
if  so,  then  thou  shouldest  not  only  lielp  no  man 
thereto,  but  rather  as  much  as  in  theelieth  withdraw 
all  men  from  it  as  noisome  and  hurtful ;  or  else  if 
thou  not  only  mayest,  but  also  of  duty  art  bound  to 
procure  it  for  others,  why  not  chiefly  for  thyself,  to 
whom  thou  art  bound  to  show  as  much  favour  and 
gentleness  as  to  others  f '  The  fundamental  question 
is,  then,  what  life  should  a  man  try  to  procure  for 
himself  ?  How  shall  he  make  it  most  joyful  ?  and 
how  joyful  will  it  be  when  he  has  done  his  utmost 
for  it  ?  It  is  in  terms  of  the  individual,  and  of  the 
individual  only,  that  the  value  of  life  can  at  first  be 
intelligibly  stated.  If  the  coin  be  not  itself  genuine, 
we  shall  never  be  able  to  make  it  so  by  merely  shuf- 
fling it  about  from  hand  to  hand,  nor  even  by  indef- 
initely multiplying  it.  A  million  sham  bank  notes 
will  not  make  us  any  richer  than  a  single  one. 
Granting  that  the  riches  are  really  genuine,  then  the 
knowledge  of  their  diffusion  may  magnify  for  each 
of  us  our  own  pleasure  in  possessing  them.  But  it 


SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  MORALITY.      71 


only  do  this  if  the  share  that  is  possessed  by 
each  be  itself  something  very  great  to  begin  with. 
Certain  intense  kinds  of  happiness  may  perhaps  be 
raised  to  ecstasy  by  the  thought  that  another  shares 
them.  But  if  the  feeling  in  question  be  nothing  more 
than  cheerfulness,  a  man  will  not  be  made  ecstatic 
by  the  knowledge  that  any  number  of  other  people 
are  cheerful  as  well  as  he.  "When  the  happiness  of 
two  or  more  people  rises  to  a  certain  temperature, 
then  it  is  true  a  certain  fusion  may  take  place,  and 
there  may  perhaps  be  a  certain  joint  result,  arising 
from  the  sum  of  the  parts.  But  below  this  melting 
point  no  fusion  or  union  takes  place  at  all,  nor  will 
any  number  of  lesser  happinesses  melt  and  be  massed 
together  into  one  great  one.  Two  great  wits  may  in- 
crease each  other's  brilliancy,  but  two  half-wits  will 
not  make  a  single  whole  one.  A  bad  picture  will  not 
become  good  by  being  magnified,  nor  will  a  merely 
readable  novel  become  more  than  readable  by  the 
publication  of  a  million  copies  of  it.  Suppose  it  were 
a  matter  of  life^  and  death  to  ten  men  to  walk  to  York 
from  London  in  a  day.  Were  this  feat  a  possible 
one,  they  might  no  doubt  each  do  their  best  to  help 
the  others  to  accomplish  it.  But  if  it  were  beyond 
the  power  of  each  singly,  they  would  not  accomplish 
it  as  a  body,  by  the  whole  ten  leaving  Charing  Cross 
together,  and  each  of  them  walking  one  tenth  of  the 
way.  The  distance  they  could  all  walk  would  be  no 


72  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

greater  than  the  distance  they  could  each  walk.  In 
the  same  way  the  value  of  human  life,  as  a  whole, 
depends  on  the  capacities  of  the  individual  human 
being,  as  an  enjoying  animal.  If  these  capacities  be 
great,  we  shall  be  eager  in  our  desire  to  gratify  them 
—certainly  for  ourselves,  and  perhaps  also  for  others  ; 
and  this  second  desire  may  perhaps  be  great  enough 
to  modify  and  to  guide  the  first.  But  unless  these 
capacities  be  great,  and  the  means  of  gratifying  them 
definite,  our  impulses  on  our  own  behalf  will  become 
weak  and  sluggish,  whilst  those  on  behalf  of  others 
will  become  less  able  to  control  them. 

It  will  be  apparent  farther  from  this,  that  just  as 
happiness,  unless  some  distinct  positive  quality, 
gains  nothing  as  an  end  of  action,  either  in  value  or 
distinctness,  by  a  mere  diffusion  in  the  present — by 
an  extension,  as  it  were,  laterally — so  will  it  gain 
nothing  further  by  giving  it  another  dimension,  and 
by  prospectively  increasing  it  in  the  future.  We 
must  know  what  it  is  first,  before  we  know  whether 
it  is  capable  of  increase.  Apart  from  this  knowl- 
edge, the  conception  of  progress  and  the  hope  of 
some  brighter  destiny  can  add  nothing  to  that  re- 
quired something,  which,  so  far  as  sociology  can 
define  it  for  us,  we  have  seen  to  be  so  utterly  in- 
adequate. Social  conditions,  it  is  true,  we  may  ex- 
pect will  go  on  improving ;  we  may  hope  that  the 
social  machinery  will  come  gradually  to  run  more 


SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  MORALITY.       73 

smoothly.  But  unless  we  know  something  positive 
to  the  contrary,  the  outcome  of  all  this  progress 
may  be  nothing  but  a  more  undistubed  ennui  or  a 
more  soulless  sensuality.  The  rose-leaves  may  be 
laid  more  smoothly,  and  yet  the  man  that  lies  on 
them  may  be  wearier  or  more  degraded. 

To-morrow,  and  to-morrow,  and  to-morrow 
Creeps  in  this  petti/  pace  from  day  to  day  ; 
And  all  our  yesterdays  have  Kg/tied  fools 
The  way  to  dusty  death. 

This,  for  all  that  sociology  can  inform  us  to  the 
contrary,  may  be  the  lesson  really  taught  us  by  the 
positive  philosophy  of  progress. 

But  what  the  positivists  themselves  learn  from  it, 
is  something  very  different.  The  following  verses 
are  George  Eliot's : 

Oh  may  I  join  the  choir  invisible 

Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again 

Tn  lives  made  better  by  their  presence.     So 

To  live  is  heaven.     .    .     . 

To  make  undying  music  in  the  world, 

Breathing  us  beauteous  order  that  controls 

With  growing  sway  the  growing  life  of  man. 

So  we  inherit  that  sweet  purity 

For  ichich  we  struggled,  groaned,  and  agonised 

With  widening  retrospect,  that  bred  despair.     .    , 

That  better  self  shall  live  till  human  time 

Shall  fold  its  eyelids,  and  the  human  sky 

Be  gathered  like  a  scroll  within  the  tomb 


74  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

Unread  for  ever.     This  is  life  to  come, 
Which  martyred  men  hate  made  more  glorious 
For  us  who  strive  to  follow.    May  I  reach 
That  purest  heaven,  and  be  to  oilier  souls 
That  cup  of  strength  in  some  great  agony, 
Enkindle  generous  ardour,  feed  pure  love, 
Beget  the  smiles  that  have  no  cruelty, 
Be  the  sweet  presence  of  a  good  diffused, 
And  in  diffusion  ever  more  intense; 
So  shatt  I  join  that  choir  invisible 
Whose  music  is  the  gladness  of  the  world. 

Here  is  the  positive  religion  of  benevolence  and  pro- 
gress, as  preached  to  the  modern  world  in  the  name 
of  exact  thought,  presented  to  us  in  an  impassioned 
epitome.  Here  is  hope,  ardour,  sympathy,  and  res- 
olution, enough  and  to  spare.  The  first  question  is, — 
How  are  these  kindled,  and  what  are  they  all  about  ? 
They  must,  as  we  have  seen,  be  about  something 
that  the  science  of  sociology  will  not  discover  for  us. 
Nor  can  they  last,  if,  like  an  empty  stomach,  they 
prey  only  upon  themselves.  They  must  have  some 
solid  content,  and  the  great  thing  needful  is  to  dis- 
cern this.  It  is  quite  true  that  to  suffer,  or.  even  to 
die,  will  often  seem  dulce  et  decorum  to  a  man ;  but 
it  will  only  seem  so  when  the  end  he  dies  or  suffers 
for  is,  in  his  estimation,  a  worthy  one.  A  Christian 
might  be  gladly  crucified  if  by  so  doing  he  could 
turn  men  from  vice  to  virtue ;  but  a  connoisseur  in 
wine  would  not  be  crucified  that  his  best  friend 


SOCIOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  MORALITY.     75 

might  prefer  dry  champagne  to   sweet.      All  the 
agony  and  the  struggles,  then,  that  the  positivist 
saint  suffers  with  such  enthusiasm,  depend  alike  for 
their  value  and  their  possibility  on  the  object  that 
is  supposed  to  cause  them.     And  in  the  verses  just 
quoted  this  object  is  indeed  named  several  times ; 
but    it  is   named  only  incidentally  and  in  vague 
terms,  as  if  its  nature  and  its  value  were  self-evi- 
dent, and  could  be  left  to  take  care  of  themselves ; 
and  the  great  thing  to  be  dwelt,  upon  were  the  means 
and  not  the  end :  whereas  the  former  are  really  only 
the  creatures  of  the  latter,  and  can  have  no  more 
honour  than  the  latter  is  able  to  bestow  upon  them. 
Now  the  only  positive  ends  named  in  these  verses 
are  lthe  better  self J  '  sweet  purity ','  and  '•smiles  that 
Jiave  no  cruelty.'9     The  conditions  of  these  are  Beau- 
teous order J  and  the  result  of  them  is  the  '•gladness 
of  tlie  world?     The  rest  of  the  language  used  adds 
nothing  to  our  positive  knowledge,  but  merely  makes 
us  feel  the  want  of  it.     The  purest  heaven,  we  are 
told,  that  the  men  of  any  generation  can  look  for- 
ward to,  will  be  the  increased  gladness  that  their 
right  conduct  will  secure  for  a  coming  generation : 
and  that  gladness,  when  it  comes,  will  be,  as  it  were, 
the  seraphic   song  of  the  blessed  and  holy  dead. 
Thus  every  present,  for  the  positivist,  is  the  future 
life  of  the  past ;  earth  is  heaven  perpetually  realis- 
ing itself  ;  it  is,  as  it  were,  an  eternal  choir-practice, 


76  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

in  which  the  performers,  though  a  little  out  of  tune 
at  present,  are  becoming  momently  more  and  more 
perfect.  If  this  be  so,  there  is  a  heaven  of  some 
sort  about  us  at  this  moment.  There  is  a  musical 
gladness  every  day  in  our  ears,  our  actual  delight  in 
which  it  might  have  been  a  heaven  to  our  great- 
grandfathers to  have  anticipated  in  the  last  century. 
Now  it  is  plain  that  this  alleged  music  is  not 
everywhere.  Where,  then,  is  it  ?  And  will  it,  when 
we  have  found  it,  be  found  to  merit  all  the  praise 
that  is  bestowed  upon  it?  Sociology,  as  we  have 
seen,  may  show  us  how  to  secure  to  each  performer 
his  voice  or  his  instrument ;  but  it  will  not  show  us 
how  to  make  either  the  voice  or  the  instrument  a 
good  one ;  nor  will  it  decide  whether  the  orchestra 
shall  perform  Beethoven  or  Offenbach,  or  whether 
the  chorus  shall  sing  a  penitential  psalm  or  a  drink- 
ing song.  When  we  have  discovered  what  the 
world's  highest  gladness  can  consist  of,  we  will 
again  come  to  the  question  of  how  far  such  gladness 
can  be  a  general  end  of  action. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

GOODNESS   AS   ITS   OWN   BEWABD. 

'  Who  chooses  me  must  give,  and  hazard  all  he  hath. '    Inscription  on  the 
Leaden  Casket.     Merchant  of  Venice. 

WHAT  I  have  been  urging  in  the  last  chapter  is 
really  nothing  more  than  the  positivists  admit  them- 
selves. It  will  be  found,  if  we  study  their  utter- 
ances as  a  whole,  that  they  by  no  means  believe 
practically  in  their  own  professions,  or  consider  that 
the  end  of  action  can  be  either  defined  and  verified 
by  sociology,  or  made  attractive  by  sympathy.  On 
the  contrary,  they  confess  plainly  how  inadequate 
these  are  by  themselves,  by  continually  supplement- 
ing them  with  additions  from  quite  another  quarter. 
But  their  fault  is  that  this  confession  is,  apparently, 
only  half  conscious  with  them  ;  and  they  are  for 
ever  reproducing  arguments  as  sufficient  which  they 
have  already  in  other  moments  implicitly  condemned 
as  meaningless.  My  aim  has  been,  therefore,  to  put 
these  arguments  out  of  court  altogether,  and  safely 
shut  the  doors  on  them.  Hitherto  they  have  played 
just  the  part  of  an  idle  populace,  often  turned  out 
of  doors,  but  as  often  breaking  in  again,  and  confus- 
ing with  their  noisy  cheers  a  judgment  that  has  not 

77 


78  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

yet  been  given.  Let  us  have  done,  then,  with  the 
conditions  of  happiness  till  we  know  what  happiness 
is.  Let  us  have  done  with  enthusiasm  till  we  know 
if  there  is  anything  to  be  enthusiastic  about. 

I  have  quoted  George  Eliot's  cheers  already,  as 
expressing  what  this  enthusiasm  is.  I  will  now  quote 
her  again,  as  showing  how  fully  she  recognises  that 
its  value  depends  upon  its  object,  and  that  its  only 
possible  object  must  be  of  a  definite,  and  in  the  first 
place,  of  a  personal  nature.  In  her  novel  of  Daniel 
Deronda,  the  large  part  of  the  interest  hangs  on 
which  way  the  heroine's  character,  will  develop 
itself ;  and  this  interest,  in  the  opinion  of  the  author- 
ess, is  of  a  very  intense  kind.  Why  should  it  be  ? 
she  asks  explicitly.  And  she  gives  her  answer  in 
the  following  very  remarkable  and  very  instructive 
passage : 

1  Could  there  ~be  a  slenderer,  more  insignificant 
thread,'  she  says,  'in  human  Jiistory,  than  this  con- 
sciousness of  a  girl,  busy  with  her  small  inferences 
of  the  way  in  which  she  could  make  her  life  pleas- 
ant f  in  a  time  too,  when  ideas  were  with  fresh  vig- 
our making  armies  of  themselves,  and  the  universal 
kinship  was  declaring  itself  fiercely :  when  women 
on  the  other  side  of  the  world  would  not  mourn  for 
the  husbands  and  sons  who  died  bravely  in  a  com- 
mon cause;  and  men,  stinted  of  bread,  on  one  side 
of  the  world,  heard  of  that  willing  loss  and  were 


GOODNESS  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  79 

patient ;  a  time  when  the  soul  of  man  was  leaking 
the  pulses  wliich  had  for  centuries  been  beating  in 
lit m  unlteardy  until  their  full  sense  made  a  new 
life  of  terror  or  of  joy. 

'What  in  the  midst  of  that  migJity  drama  are 
girls  and  their  blind  visions?  They  are  the  Tea  or 
^ay  of  that  good  for  which  men  are  enduring  and 
fighting.  In  these  delicate  vessels  is  borne  onward 
through  tJie  ages  the  treasure  of  human  affections.'9 

Now  here  we  come  to  solid  ground  at  last.  Here 
is  an  emphatic  and  frank  admission  of  all  that  I  was 
urging  in  the  last  chapter  ;  and  the  required  end  of 
action  and  test  of  conduct  is  brought  to  a  focus  and 
localized.  It  is  not  described,  it  is  true  ;  but  a  nar- 
row circle  is  drawn  round  it,  and  our  future  search 
for  it  becomes  a  matter  of  comparative  ease.  We 
are  in  a  position  now  to  decide  whether  it  exists,  or 
does  not  exist.  It  consists  primarily  and  before  all 
things  in  the  choice  by  the  individual  of  one  out  of 
many  modes  of  happiness — the  election  of  a  certain 
'way,'  in  George  Eliot's  words,  '•in  which  Tie  will 
make  his  life  pleasant.''  There  are  many  sets  of 
pleasure  open  to  him  ;  but  there  is  one  set,  it  is  said, 
more  excellent,  beyond  comparison,  than  the  others  ; 
and  to  choose  these,  and  these  alone,  is  what  will 
give  us  part  in  the  holy  value  of  life.  The  choice 
and  the  refusal  of  them  is  the  Yea  and  the  Nay  of 
all  that  makes  life  worth  living  ;  and  is  the  source, 


80  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

to  the  positivists,  of  the  solemnity,  the  terrors,  and 
sweetness  of  the  whole  ethical  vocabulary.  '  What 
tlieii  are  the  alternative  pleasures  that  life  offers 
me \  In  how  many  ways  am  I  capable  of  feeling 
my  existence  a  blessing  f  and  in  what  way  shall  I 
feel  the  blessing  of  it  most  keenly f  This  is  the 
great  life-question  ;  it  may  be  asked  indifferently  by 
any  individual ;  and  in  the  positivist  answer  to  it, 
which  will  be  the  same  for  all,  and  of  universal  ap- 
plication, must  lie  the  foundation  of  the  positive 
moral  system. 

And  that  system,  as  I  have  said  before,  professes 
to  be  essentially  a  moral  one,  in  the  old  religious 
sense  of  the  word.  It  retains  the  old  ethical  vocabu- 
lary ;  and  lays  the  same  intense  stress  on  the  old 
ethical  distinctions.  Nor  is  this  a  mere  profession 
only.  We  shall  see  that  the  system  logically  re- 
quires it.  One  of  its  chief  virtues — indeed  the  only 
virtue  in  it  we  have  defined  hitherto — is,  as  has  been 
seen,  an  habitual  self-denial.  But  a  denial  of  what  ? 
Of  something,  plainly,  that  if  denied  to  ourselves, 
can  be  conveyed  as  a  negative  or  positive  good  to 
others.  But  the  good  things  that  are  thus  trans- 
ferable cannot  plainly  be  the  '•highest  good?  or  mor- 
ality would  consist  largely  of  a  surrender  of  its  own 
end.  This  end  must  evidently  be  something  inward 
and  inalienable,  just  as  the  religious  end  was.  It  is 
a  certain  inward  state  of  the  heart,  and  of  the  heart's 


GOODNESS  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  81 

affections.  For  this  inward  state  to  be  fully  pro- 
duced, and  maintained  generally,  a  certain  suffi- 
ciency of  material  well-being  may  be  requisite  ;  but 
without  this  inward  state  such  sufficiency  will  be 
morally  valueless.  Day  by  day  we  must  of  conrse 
have  our  daily  bread.  But  the  positivists  must 
maintain,  just  as  the  Christians  did,  that  man  does 
not  live  by  bread  alone  ;  and  that  his  life  does  not 
consist  in  the  abundance  of  the  things  that  he  pos- 
sesses. And  thus  when  they  are  brought  face  to  face 
with  the  matter,  we  find  them  all,  with  one  consent, 
condemning  as  false  the  same  allurements  that  were 
condemned  by  Christianity  ;  and  pointing,  as  it  did, 
to  some  other  treasure  that  will  not  wax  old — some 
water,  the  man  who  drinks  of  which  will  never  thirst 
more. 

Now  what  is  this  treasure — this  inward  state  of  the 
heart?  What  is  its  analysis,  and  why  is  it  so  pre- 
cious ?  As  yet  we  are  quite  in  the  dark  as  to  this.  No 
positive  moralist  has  as  yet  shown  us,  in  any  satis- 
factory way,  either  of  these  things.  This  statement, 
I  know,  will  be  contradicted  by  many  ;  and,  until  it 
is  explained  further,  it  is  only  natural  that  it  should 
be.  It  will  be  said  that  a  positive  human  happiness 
of  just  the  kind  needed  has  been  put  before  the 
world  again  and  again  ;  and  not  only  put  before  it, 
but  earnestly  followed  and  reverently  enjoyed  by 
many.  Have  not  truth,  benevolence,  purity,  and, 
6 


82  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

above  all,  pure  affection,  been,  to  many,  positive 
ends  of  action  for  their  own  sakes,  without  any 
thought,  as  Dr.  Tyndall  says,  ''of  any  reward  or 
punishment  looming  in  the  future"*  1  Is  not  virtue 
followed  in  the  noblest  way,  when  its  followers,  if 
asked  what  reward  they  look  for,  can  say  to  it,  as 
Thomas  Aquinas  said  to  Christ.  *  Nil  nisi  te, 
Domine '  \  And  has  not  it  so  been  followed  ?  and  is 
not  the  positivist  position,  to  a  large  extent  at  any 
rate,  proved? 

Is  it  not  true,  as  has  been  said  by  a  recent  writer, 
that  *  '  lives  nourished  and  invigorated  ~by  [a  purely 
human]  ideal  7iave  been,  and  still  may  be,  seen 
amongst  us,  and  the  appearance  of  but  a  single  ex- 
ample proves  the  adequacy  of  the  belief? ' 

I  reply  that  the  fact  is  entirely  true,  and  the  in- 
ference entirely  false.  And  this  brings  me  at  once 
to  a  point  I  have  before  alluded  to — to  the  most  sub- 
tle source  of  the  entire  positivist  error — the  source 
secret  and  unsuspected,  of  so  much  rash  confidence. 

The  positive  school  can,  and  do,  as  we  have  seen, 
point  to  certain  things  in  life  which  have  every  ap- 
pearance, at  first  sight,  of  adequate  moral  ends. 
Their  adequacy  seems  to  be  verified  by  every  right 
feeling,  and  also  by  practical  experiment.  But  there 
is  one  great  fact  that  is  forgotten.  The  positive 
school,  when  they  deal  with  life,  profess  to  exhibit 

1  Vide  Pessimism,  by  James  Sully. 


GOODNESS  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  83 

its  resources  to  us  wholly  free  from  the  false  aids  of 
religion.  They  profess  (if  I  may  coin  a  word)  to 
have  de-religionized  it  before  they  deal  with  it.  But 
about  this  matter  they  betray  a  most  strange  igno- 
rance. They  think  the  task  is  far  simpler  than  it  is. 
They  seem  to  look  on  religion  as  existing  nowhere 
except  in  its  pure  form,  in  the  form  of  distinct  devo- 
tional feeling,  or  in  the  conscious  assents  of  faith ; 
and,  these  once  got  rid  of,  they  fancy  that  life  is  de- 
religionized.  But  the  process  thus  far  is  really  only 
begun ;  indeed,  as  far  as  immediate  results  go,  it  is 
hardly  even  begun  ;  for  it  is  really  but  a  very  small 
proportion  of  religion  that  exists  pure.  The  greater 
part  of  it  has  entered  into  combination  with  the  acts 
and  feelings  of  life,  thus  forming  as  it  were,  a  kind 
of  amalgam  with  them,  giving  them  new  properties, 
a  new  colour,  a  new  consistence.  To  de-religionize 
life,,  then,  it  is  not  enough  to  condemn  creeds  and  to 
abolish  prayers.  We  must  further  sublimate  the 
beliefs  and  feelings,  which  prayers  and  creeds  hold 
pure,  out  of  the  lay  life  around  us.  Under  this  pro- 
cess, even  if  imperfectly  performed,  it  will  soon  be- 
come clear  that  religion  in  greater  or  less  proportions 
is  lurking  everywhere.  We  shall  see  it  yielded  up 
even  by  things  in  which  we  should  least  look  for  it 
—by  wit,  by  humour,  by  secular  ambition,  by  most 
forms  of  vice,  and  by  our  daily  light  amusements. 
Much  more  shall  we  see  it  yielded  up  by  heroism,  by 


84  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

purity,  by  affection,  and  by  love  of  truth — by  all 
those  things  that  the  positivists  most  specially  praise. 

The  positivists  think,  it  would  seem,  that  they 
had  but  to  kill  God,  and  that  his  inheritance  shall 
be  ours.  They  strike  out  accordingly  the  theistic 
beliefs  in  question,  and  then  turn  instantly  to  life  : 
they  sort  its  resources,  count  its  treasures,  and  then 
say,  '  Aim  at  this,  and  this,  and  this.  See  how 
beautiful  is  holiness  ;  see  haw  rapturous  is  pleasure. 
Surely  these  are  worth  seeking  for  their  own  safces, 
without  any  '•'•reward  or  'punishment  looming  in  the 
future."  They  find,  in  fact,  the  interests  and  the 
sentiments  of  the  world's  present  life — all  the  glow 
and  all  the  gloom  of  it — lying  before  them  like  the 
colours  on  a  painter's  palette,  and  think  they  have 
nothing  to  do  but  set  to  work  and  use  them.  But 
let  them  wait  a  moment ;  they  are  in  far  too  great  a 
hurry.  The  palette  and  its  colours  are  not  nearly 
ready  for  them. 

One  of  the  colours  of  life — religion,  that  is — a 
colour  which,  by  their  own  admission,  has  been 
hitherto  an  important  one,  they  have  swept  clean 
away.  They  have  swept  it  clean  away,  and  let  them 
remember  why  they  have  done  so.  It  may  be  a 
pleasing  colour,  or  it  may  not :  that  is  a  matter  of 
taste.  But  the  reason  why  it  is  to  be  got  rid  of  is 
that  it  is  not  a  fast  colour.  It  is  found  to  fade  in- 
stantly in  the  spreading  sunlight  of  knowledge.  It 


GOODNESS  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  85 

is  rapidly  getting  dim  and  dull  and  dead.  When 
once  it  is  gone,  we  shall  never  be  able  to  restore  it, 
and  our  future  pictures  of  life  must  be  tinted  with- 
out its  aid.  They  therefore  profess  loudly  that  they 
will  employ  it  no  longer. 

But  there  is  this  point,  this  all-important  point, 
that  quite  escapes  them.  They  sweep  the  colour,  in 
its  pure  state,  clean  off  the  palette ;  and  then  pro- 
fess to  show  us  by  experiment  that  they  can  get  on 
perfectly  well  without  it.  But  they  never  seem  to 
suspect  that  it  may  be  mixed  up  with  the  colours 
they  retain,  and  be  the  secret  of  their  depth  and 
lustre.  Let  them  see  whether  religion  be  not  lurk- 
ing there,  as  a  subtle  colouring  principle  in  all  their 
pigments,  even  a  grain  of  it  producing  effects  that 
else  were  quite  impossible.  Let  them  only  begin 
this  analysis,  and  it  will  very  soon  be  clear  to  them 
that  to  cleanse  life  of  religion  is  not  so  simple  a  pro- 
cess as  they  seem  to  fancy  it.  Its  actual  dogmas 
may  be  readily  put  away  from  us  ;  not  so  the  effect 
which  these  dogmas  have  worked  during  the  course 
of  centuries.  In  disguised  forms  they  are  around  us 
everywhere  ;  they  confront  us  in  every  human  inter- 
est, in  every  human  pleasure.  They  have  beaten 
themselves  into  life  ;  they  have  eaten  their  way  into  it. 
Like  a  secret  sap  they  have  flavoured  every  fruit  in 
the  garden.  They  are  like  a  powerful  drug,  a  stim- 
ulant, that  has  been  injected  into  our  whole  system. 


86  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING* 

If  then  we  coiild  appraise  the  vigour  and  value  of 
life  independent  of  religion,  we  can  draw  no  direct 
conclusions  from  observing  it  in  its  present  state. 
Before  such  observations  can  teach  us  anything,  there 
is  a  great  deal  that  will  have  to  be  made  allowance  for : 
and  the  positive  school,  when  they  reason  from  life 
as  it  is,  are  building  therefore  on  an  utterly  unsound 
foundation.  It  is  emphatically  untrue  to  say  that  a 
single  example  in  the  present  day,  or  for  matter  of 
that  any  number  of  examples,  either  goes  or  can  go 
any  way  towards  proving  the  adequacy  of  any  non- 
religious  formula.  For  all  such  formulae  have  first 
to  be  further  analysed  before  we  know  how  far  they 
are  really  non-religious  ;  and  secondly  the  religious 
element  that  will  be  certainly  found  existing  in  them 
will  have,  hypothetically,  to  be  removed. 

It  would  be  well  if  the  positive  school  would  spend 
in  this  spiritual  analysis  but  a  little  of  that  skill 
they  have  attained  to  in  their  analysis  of  matter.  In 
their  experiments,  for  instance,  on  spontaneous 
generation,  what  untold  pains  have  been  taken  ! 
With  what  laborious  thought,  with  what  emulous 
ingenuity,  have  they  struggled  to  completely  sterilise 
the  fluids  in  which  they  are  to  seek  for  the  new  pro- 
duction of  life  !  How  jealously  do  they  guard  against 
leaving  there  any  already  existing  germs  !  How 
easily  do  they  tell  us  their  experiments  may  be 
vitiated  by  the  smallest  oversight ! 


GOODNESS  AS  ITS  OWN  EEWARD.  87 

Surely  spiritual  matters  are  worthy  of  an  equally 
careful  treatment.  For  what  we  have  here  to  study 
is  not  the  production  of  the  lowest  forms  of  animal 
life,  but  the  highest  forms  of  human  happiness. 
These  were  once  thought  to  be  always  due  to  relig- 
ion. The  modern  doctrine  is  that  they  are  produ- 
cible without  such  aid.  Let  us  treat,  then,  the 
beauty  of  holiness,  the  love  of  truth,  '  the  treasure 
of  human  affection J  and  so  forth,  as  Dr.  Tyndall 
has  treated  the  infusions  in  which  life  is  said  to 
originate.  Let  us  boil  them  down,  so  to  speak,  and 
destroy  every  germ  of  religion  in  them,  and  then 
see  how  far  they  will  generate  the  same  ecstatic 
happiness.  And  let  us  treat  in  this  way  vice  no  less 
than  virtue.  Having  once  done  this,  we  may  hon- 
estly claim  whatever  yet  remains  to  us.  Then,  we 
shall  see  what  materials  of  happiness  we  can,  as 
positive  thinkers,  call  our  own.  Then,  a  positive 
moral  system,  if  any  such  be  possible,  will  begin  to 
have  a  real  value  for  us — then,  but  not  till  then. 

Such  an  analysis  as  this  must  be  naturally  a  work 
of  time ;  and  much  of  it  must  be  performed  by  each 
one  of  us  for  ourselves.  But  a  sample  of  the  opera- 
tion can  be  given  here,  which  will  show  plainly 
enough  its  nature,  and  the  ultimate  results  of  it.  I 
shall  begin,  for  this  purpose,  with  reconsidering  the 
moral  end  generally,  and  the  three  primary  charac- 
teristics that  are  ascribed,  by  all  parties,  to  it,  as 


88  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

essentials.  I  shall  point  out,  generally  also,  how 
much  of  religion  is  embodied  in  all  these  ;  and  shall 
then  proceed  to  one  or  two  concrete  examples,  taken 
from  the  pleasures  and  passions  that  animate  the 
life  around  us. 

These  three  characteristics  of  the  moral  end  are 
its  inwardness,  its  importance,  and,  within  certain 
limits,  its  absolute  character. 

I  begin  with  its  inwardness.  I  have  spoken  of 
this  several  times  already,  but  the  matter  is  so  im- 
portant that  it  will  well  bear  repetition.  By  calling 
the  moral  end  inward,  I  mean  that  it  resides  prima- 
rily not  in  action,  but  in  motives  to  action  ;  in  the 
will,  not  in  the  deed  ;  not  in  what  we  actually  do, 
but  in  what  we  actually  endeavour  to  do ;  in  the  love 
we  give,  rather  than  in  the  love  that  we  receive. 
What  defiles  a  man  is  that  which  comes  out  of  his 
heart  —  evil  thoughts,  murders,  adulteries.  The 
thoughts  may  never  find  utterance  in  a  word,  the 
murders  and  adulteries  may  never  be  fulfilled  in 
act ;  and  yet,  if  a  man  be  restrained,  not  by  his  own 
will,  but  only  by  outer  circumstances,  his  immo- 
rality will  be  the  same.  The  primary  things  we  are 
'responsible for,'  observes  a  recent  positive  writer,1 
are  'frames  of  mind  into  which  we  knowingly  and 
willingly  worJc  ourselves '  :  and  when  these  are  once 

1  Professor  Clifford  ;  '  Ethics  of  Belief,'  Contemporary  Review,  Jaa 
1877. 


GOODNESS  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  89 

wrong,  he  adds,  '  they  are  wrong  for  ever :  no  acci- 
dental failure  of  their  good  o?'  evil  fruits  can  possi- 
bly alter  that?  And  as  with  what  is  wrong  or 
vicious,  so  with  what  is  right  or  virtuous ;  this  in  a 
like  manner  proceeds  out  of  the  mind  or  heart. 
'  The  gladness  of  true  heroism?  says  Dr.  Tyndall, 
'  visits  the  heart  of  him  who  is  really  competent  to 
say,  "  I  court  truth"  It  is  not,  be  it  observed,  the 
objective  attainment  of  truth  that  creates  the  glad- 
ness. It  is  the  subjective  desire,  the  subjective  reso- 
lution. The  moral  end,  for  the  positivist  just  as 
much  as  for  the  believer,  is  a  certain  inward  state  of 
the  heart,  or  mind — a  state  which  will  of  necessity, 
if  possible,  express  itself  in  action,  but  whose  value 
is  not  to  be  measured  by  the  success  of  that  expres- 
sion. The  battle-ground  of  good  and  evil  is  within 
us  ;  and  the  great  human  event  is  the  issue  of  the 
struggle  between  them. 

And  this  leads  us  on  to  the  second  point.  The 
language  used  on  all  hands  respecting  this  struggle, 
implies  that  its  issue  is  of  an  importance  great  out 
of  all  proportion  to  our  own  consciousness  of  the  re- 
sults of  it,  nay,  even  that  it  is  independent  of  our 
consciousness.  It  is  implied  that  though  a  man  may 
be  quite  ignorant  of  the  state  of  his  own  heart,  and 
though  no  one  else  can  so  much  as  guess  at  it,  what 
that  state  is  is  of  great  and  peculiar  moment.  If 
this  were  not  so,  and  the  importance  of  our  inner 


90  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

state  had  reference  only  to  our  own  feelings  about 
it,  self-deception  would  be  as  good  as  virtue.  To 
believe  we  were  upright,  pure,  and  benevolent  would 
be  as  good  as  to  be  so.  We  might  have  all  the 
pleasures  of  morality  with  none  of  its  inconveni- 
ences ;  for  it  is  easy,  if  I  may  borrow  a  phrase  of 
Mr.  Tennyson's,  to  become  so  false  tliat  we  take  our- 
selves for  true ;  and  thus,  tested  by  a*ny  pain  or  joy 
that  we  ourselves  were  conscious  of,  the  results  of 
the  completest  falsehood  would  be  the  same  as  those 
of  the  completest  virtue. 

But  let  a  man  be  never  so  perfect  an  instance  of  a 
result  like  this,  no  positivist  moralist  would  contend 
that  he  was  virtuous,  or  that  he  could  be  said,  at  his 
death,  to  have  found  the  true  treasure  of  life.  On 
the  contrary  his  career  would  be  regarded  as,  in  the 
profoundest  sense,  a  tragedy.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  such  a  value  is  set  at  present  upon  feminine 
purity,  and  that  we  are  accustomed  to  call  the  wo- 
man ruined  that  has  lost  it.  The  outer  harm  done 
may  not  be  great,  and  may  lead  to  no  ill  conse- 
quences. The  harm  is  all  within  :  the  tragedy,  is  in 
the  soul  itself.  But — and  this  is  more  important 
still — even  here  the  harm  may  not  be  recognised  : 
the  act  in  question  may  lead  to  no  remorse  ;  and  yet 
despite  this,  the  case  will  be  made  no  better.  On 
the  contrary  it  will  be  made  a  great  deal  worse. 
Any  father  or  husband  would  recognise  this,  who 


GOODNESS  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  91 

was  not  professedly  careless  about  all  moral  matters 
altogether.  It  would  not,  for  instance,  console  a 
positivist  for  his  daughter's  seduction  to  know  that 
the  matter  was  hushed  up,  and  that  it  gave  the  lady 
herself  no  concern  whatever.  It  is  implied  in  the 
language  of  all  who  profess  to  regard  morality,  that 
whether  the  guilty  person  be  conscious  or  no  of  any 
remorse  or  sorrow,  the  same  harm  has  been  done 
by  what  we  call  guilt. 

There  is,  however  (and  this  brings  us  to  the  third 
point),  a  very  large  part  of  the  world  that,  as  a  fact, 
no  matter  what  it  professes,  really  sets  upon  moral- 
ity no  true  value  whatever.  If  it  has  ever  realised 
at  all  what  morality  is,  it  has  done  so  only  partially  ; 
it  has  been  more  impressed  with  its  drawbacks  than 
with  its  attractions,  and  it  becomes  practically  hap- 
pier and  more  contented,  the  more  it  forgets  the  very 
idea  of  virtue.  But  it  is  implied,  as  we  have  seen, 
in  the  usual  language  of  all  of  us  that,  let  the  vicious 
be  as  happy  as  possible,  they  have  no  right  to  such 
a  happiness,  and  that  if  they  choose  to  take  it,  it 
will  in  some  way  or  other  be  the  worse  for  them. 
This  language  evidently  implies  farther  that  there  is 
some  standard  by  which  happiness  is  to  be  measured, 
quite  apart  from  its  completeness,  and  from  our  in- 
dividual desire  for  it.  That  standard  is  something 
absolute,  beyond  and  above  the  taste  of  any  single 
man  or  of  any  body  of  men.  It  is  a  standard  to 


92  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING! 

which  the  human  race  can  be  authoritatively  ordered 
to  conform,  or  be  despised,  derided,  and  hated,  if  it 
refuse  to  do  so.  It  is  implied  that  those  who  find 
their  happiness  in  virtue  have  a  right  to  order  and  to 
force,  if  possible,  all  others  to  do  the  same.  Unless 
we  believed  this  there  would  be  no  such  thing  as 
moral  earnestness  in  the  propagation  of  any  system. 
There  could,  indeed,  be  no  such  thing  as  propagan- 
dism  at  all.  If  a  man  (to  use  an  example  of  Mill's) 
preferred  to  be  a  contented  pig  rather  than  a  discon- 
tented Socrates,  we  should  have  no  positive  reason 
for  thinking  him  wrong  ;  even  did  we  think  so  we 
should  have  no  motive  for  telling  him  so  ;  even  if 
we  told  him,  we  should  have  no  means  of  convinc- 
ing him. 

Those,  then,  who  regard  morality  as  the  rule  of 
action,  and  the  one  key  that  can  unlock  for  each  of 
us  the  true  treasure  of  life,  who  talk  of  things  being 
noble  and  sacred  and  heroic,  who  call  our  responsi- 
bilities and  our  privileges  '  awful,  and  who  urge  on 
a  listless  world  the  earnestness  and  the  solemnity  of 
existence — all  those,  I  say,  who  use  such  language 
as  this,  imply  of  the  moral  end  three  necessary 
things  :  first,  that  its  essence  is  inward,  in  the  heart 
of  man  ;  secondly,  that  its  value  is  incalculable,  and 
its  attainment  the  only  true  happiness  for  us ;  third- 

1  'An  awful  privilege,  and  an  awful  responsibility,  tJiat  we  should  help 
to  create  a  world  in  which  posterity  will  lice  !  ' — Professor  Clifford. 


GOODNESS  AS  ITS  0  H'JV  REWARD.  93 

ly,  that  its  standard  is  something  absolute,  and  not 
in  the  competence  of  any  man  or  of  all  men  to  alter 
or  abolish.  That  this  is  true  may  be  very  easily 
seen.  Deny  any  one  of  these  propositions  ;  say  that 
the  moral  end  consists  in  something  outward  and 
alienable,  not  in  something  inward  and  inalienable  ; 
that  its  importance  is  small,  and  second  to  many 
other  things  ;  that  its  standard  is  not  absolute,  but 
varies  according  to  individual  taste  ;  and  morality 
becomes  at  once  impossible  to  preach,  and  not  worth 
preaching. 

Now  for  all  these  characteristics  of  the  end  of  life, 
the  theism  that  modern  thought  is  rejecting  could 
offer  a  strictly  logical  basis.  And  first,  as  to  its  im- 
portance. Here  it  may  be  said,  certainly,  that  theism 
cuts  the  knot,  and  does  not  untie  it.  But  at  all  events 
it  gets  rid  of  it ;  and  in  the  following  way.  The 
theist  confesses  freely  that  the  importance  of  the 
moral  end  is  a  thing  that  the  facts  of  life,  as  we  now 
know  them,  will  never  properly  explain  to  us.  It 
can  at  present  be  divined  and  augured  only ;  its  value 
is  one  of  promise  rather  than  of  performance  ;  and 
the  possession  itself  is  a  thing  that  passes  under- 
standing. It  belongs  to  a  region  of  mystery  into 
which  neither  logic  nor  experiment  will  ever  suffice 
to  carry  us  ;  and  whose  secrets  are  beyond  the  reach 
of  any  intellectual  aeronaut.  But  it  is  a  part  of  the 
theistic  creed  that  such  a  region  is ;  and  that  the 


94  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING! 

things  that  pass  understanding  are  the  most  import- 
ant things  of  life.  Nothing  would  be  gained,  how- 
ever, by  postulating  merely  a  mystery — an  unknow- 
able. This  must  be  so  far  known  by  the  theist,  that 
he  knows  its  connection  with  himself.  He  must 
know,  too,  that  if  this  connection  is  to  have  any  ef- 
fect on  him,  it  must  be  not  merely  temporary,  but 
permanent  and  indissoluble.  Such  a  connection  he 
finds  in  his  two  distinctive  doctrines — the  existence 
of  a  personal  God,  which  gives  him  the  connection  ; 
and  his  own  personal  immortality,  which  perpetuates 
it.  Thus  the  theist,  upon  his  own  theory,  has  an  eye 
ever  upon  him.  He  is  in  constant  relationship  with 
a  conscious  omnipotent  Being,  in  whose  likeness  he 
is  in  some  sort  formed,  and  to  which  he  is  in  some 
sort  kin.  To  none  of  his  actions  is  this  Being  indif- 
ferent ;  and  with  this  Being  his  relations  for  good  or 
evil  will  never  cease.  Thus,  though  he  may  not  re- 
alise their  true  nature  now,  though  he  may  not  re- 
alise how  infinitely  good  the  good  is,  or  how  infinitely 
evil  the  evil,  there  is  a  day  in  store  for  him  when  his 
eyes  will  be  opened,  and  what  he  now  sees  only 
through  a  glass  darkly,  he  will  see  face  to  face. 

The  objectivity  of  the  moral  end — or  rather  the 
objective  standard  of  the  subjective  end — is  explained 
in  the  same  way.  The  standard  is  God's  will,  not 
man' s  immediate  happiness.  And  yet  to  this  will,  as 
soon  as,  by  natural  or  supernatural  means,  we  discern 


GOODNESS  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  95 

it,  the  Godlike  part  of  our  nature  at  once  responds : 
it  at  once  acknowledges  it  as  eternal  and  divine, 
although  we  can  give  no  logical  reasons  for  such 
acknowledgment. 

By  the  light,  too,  of  these  same  beliefs,  the  inward- 
ness of  the  moral  end  assumes  an  explicable  mean- 
ing. Man's  primary  duty  is  towards  God;  his  sec- 
ondary duty  is  towards  his  brother  men  ;  and  it  is 
only  from  the  filial  relation  that  the  fraternal  springs. 
The  moral  end,  then,  is  so  precious  in  the  eyes  of  the 
theist,  because  the  inward  state  that  it  consists  of  is 
agreeable  to  what  God  wills — a  God  who  reads  the 
heart,  and  who  cannot  be  deceived.  And  the  theist' s 
peace  or  gladness  in  his  highest  moral  actions  springs 
not  so  much  from  the  consciousness  of  what  he  does 
or  is,  as  of  the  reasons  why  he  does  or  is  it — reasons 
that  reach  far  away  beyond  the  earth  and  its  desti- 
nies, and  connect  him  with  some  timeless  and  holy 
mystery. 

Thus  theism,  whether  it  be  true  or  no,  can  give  a 
logical  and  a  full  account  of  the  supposed  nature  of 
the  moral  end,  and  of  its  supposed  importance.  Let 
us  turn  now  to  positivism,  and  consider  what  is  its  po- 
sition. The  positivist,  we  must  remember,  conceives 
of  the  moral  end  in  the  same  way,  and  sets  upon  it  the 
same  value.  Let  us  see  how  far  his  own  premisses 
will  give  him  any  support  in  this.  These  premisses,  so 
far  as  they  differ  from  those  of  theism,  consist  of  two 


96  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

great  denials :  there  is  no  personal  God,  and  there  is 
no  personal  immortality.  We  will  glance  rapidly  at 
the  direct  results  of  these. 

In  the  first  place,  they  confine  all  the  life  with  which 
we  can  have  the  least  moral  connection  to  the  surface 
of  this  earth,  and  to  the  limited  time  for  which  life 
and  consciousness  can  exist  upon  it.  They  isolate 
the  moral  law,  as  I  shall  show  more  clearly  hereafter, 
from  any  law  or  force  in  the  universe  that  may  be 
wider  and  more  permanent.  When  the  individual 
dies,  he  can  only  be  said  to  live  by  metaphor,  in  the 
results  of  his  outward  actions.  When  the  race  dies, 
in  no  thinkable  way  can  we  say  that  it  will  live  at  all. 
Everything  will  then  be  as  though  it  never  had  been. 
Whatever  humanity  may  have  done  before  its  end 
arrives,  however  high  it  may  have  raised  itself,  how- 
ever low  it  may  have  sunk  itself, 

The  event 

Will  trammel  up  the  consequence,  and  catch 
With  its  success  surcease. 

All  the  vice  of  the  world,  and  all  its  virtue,  all  its 
pleasures  and  all  its  pains,  will  have  effected  nothing. 
They  will  all  have  faded  like  an  unsubstantial  pa- 
geant, and  not  left  a  wrack  behind. 

Here,  then,  the  importance  of  morality  at  once 
changes  both  its  dimensions  and  its  kind.  It  is  con- 
fined within  narrow  limitations  of  space  and  time. 
It  is  no  longer  a  thing  we  can  talk  vaguely  about,  or 


GOODNESS  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  97 

to  which  any  sounding  but  indefinite  phrases  will  be 
applicable.  We  can  no  longer  say  either  to  the  in- 
dividual or  the  race, 

Choose  well,  and  your  choice  is 
Brief,  but  yet  endless. ' 

We  can  only  say  that  it  is  brief,  and  that  bye  and 
bye  what  it  was  will  be  no  matter  to  anyone. 

Still  within  these  limits  it  may  be  said,  certainly, 
that  it  is  a  great  thing  for  us  that  we  should  be  hap- 
py ;  and  if  it  be  true  that  the  moral  end  brings  the 
greatest  happiness,  then  it  is  man's  greatest  achieve- 
ment to  attain  to  the  moral  end.  But  when  we  say 
that  the  greatest  happiness  resides  in  the  moral  end, 
we  must  be  careful  to  see  what  it  is  we  mean.  We 
may  mean  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  men  generally  give 
a  full  assent  to  this,  and  act  accordingly,  which  is  the 
most  obvious  falsehood  that  could  be  uttered  on  any 
subject ;  or  we  may  mean — indeed,  if  we  mean  any- 
thing we  must  mean — that  they  would  give  a  full  as- 
sent, and  act  accordingly,  could  their  present  state 
of  mind  undergo  a  complete  change,  and  their  eyes 
be  opened,  which  at  present  are  fast  closed.  But  ac- 
cording to  the  positivist  theory,  this  hypothesis  is  in 
most  cases  an  impossibility.  The  moral  end,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  an  inward  state  of  the  heart ;  and  the 
heart,  on  the  showing  of  the  positivists,  is  for  each 

1  Goethe,  translated  by  Carlyle. 

7 


98  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

man  an  absolute  solitude.  No  one  can  gain  admis- 
sion to  it  but  by  his  assistance ;  and  to  the  larger 
part  no  one  can  ever  gain  admission  at  all. 

Thus  in  the  seas  of  life  enisled, 
With  ecltoing  straits  between  us  thrown, 

Dotting  the  shoreless  watery  wild, 
We  mortal  myriads  live  alone. 

So  says  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  ;  and  the  gentle  Keble 
utters  the  same  sentiment,  remarking,  with  a  deli- 
cate pathos,  how  seldom  those  even  who  have  known 
us  best  and  longest 

Snow  half  the  reason  why  we  smile  or  sigh. 

Thus  in  the  recesses  of  his  own  soul  each  man  is,  for 
the  positivist,  as  much  alone  as  if  he  were  the  only 
conscious  thing  in  the  universe  ;  and  his  whole  inner 
life,  when  he  dies,  will,  to  use  some  words  of  George 
Eliot's  that  I  have  already  quoted, 

Be  gathered  like  a  scroll  within  the  tomb, 
Unread  f>rr  ever. 

No  one  shall  enquire  into  his  inward  thoughts,  much 
less  shall  anyone  judge  him  for  them.  To  no  one 
except  himself  can  he  in  any  way  have  to  answer  for 
them. 

Such  is  the  condition  of  the  individual  according 
to  the  positivist  theory.  It  is  evident,  therefore, 
that  one  of  the  first  results  of  positivism  is  to  de- 
stroy even  the  rudiments  of  any  machinery  by  which 
one  man  could  govern,  with  authority,  the  inward 


GOODNESS  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  99 

kingdom  of  another ;  and  the  moral  imperative  is 
reduced  to  an  empty  vaunt.  For  what  can  be  an 
emptier  flourish  than  for  one  set  of  men,  and  these 
a  confessed  minority,  to  proclaim  imperious  laws  to 
others,  which  they  can  never  get  the  others  to  obey, 
and  which  are  essentially  meaningless  to  the  only 
people  to  whom  they  are  not  superfluous  ?  Suppose 
that,  on  positive  grounds,  I  find  pleasure  in  humil- 
ity, and  my  friend  finds  pleasure  in  pride,  and  so 
far  as  we  can  form  a  judgment  the  happiness  of  us 
both  is  equal ;  what  possible  grounds  can  I  have  for 
calling  my  state  better  than  his  ?  Were  I  a  theist, 
I  should  have  the  best  of  grounds,  for  I  should  be- 
lieve that  hereafter  my  friend's  present  contentment 
would  be  dissipated,  and  would  give  place  to  de- 
spair. But  as  a  positivist,  if  his  contentment  do  but 
last  his  lifetime,  what  can  I  say  except  this,  that  he 
has  chosen  what,  for  him,  was  his  better  part  for 
ever,  and  no  God  or  man  will  ever  take  it  away  from 
him  ?  To  say  then  that  his  immoral  state  was  worse 
than  my  moral  state  would  be  a  phrase  incapable  of 
any  practical  meaning.  It  might  mean  that,  could 
my  friend  be  made  to  think  as  I  do,  he  would  be 
happier  than  he  is  at  present ;  but  we  have  here  an 
impossible  hypothesis,  and  an  unverifiable  conclu- 
sion. It  is  true  enough  that  I  might  present  to  my 
friend  some  image  of  my  own  inward  state,  and  of 
all  the  happiness  it  gave  me ;  but  if,  having  com- 


100  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

pared  Ms  happiness  and  mine  as  well  as  lie  could, 
he  still  liked  his  own  best,  exhortation  would  have 
no  power,  and  reproach  no  meaning. 

Here,  then,  are  three  results — simple,  immediate, 
and  necessary — of  positivism,  on  the  moral  end.  Of 
the  three  characteristics  at  present  supposed  essen- 
tial to  it,  positivism  eliminates  two  and  materially 
modifies  the  third. 

In  the  first  place,  the  importance  of  the  moral 
end  is  altogether  changed  in  character.  It  has  noth- 
ing in  it  whatever  of  the  infinite,  and  a  scientific 
forecast  can  already  see  the  end  of  it. 

In  the  second  place,  it  is  nothing  absolute,  and  not 
being  absolute  is  incapable  of  being  enforced. 

In  the  third  place,  its  value,  such  as  it  is,  is  meas- 
ured only  by  the  conscious  happiness  that  its  pos- 
session gives  us,  or  the  conscious  pains  that  its  loss 
gives  us. 

Still  it  may  be  contended  with  plausibility  that  the 
moral  end,  when  once  seen,  is  sufficient  to  attract  us 
by  its  own  inalienable  charm,  and  can  hold  its  own 
independently  of  any  further  theories  as  to  its  na- 
ture and  its  universality.  It  remains  now  to  come 
to  practical  life,  and  see  if  this  really  be  so  ;  to  see 
if  the  pleasures  in  life  that  are  supposed  the  highest 
will  not  lose  their  attractiveness  when  robbed  of  the 
three  characteristics  of  which  the  positive  theory 
robs  them. 


CHAPTER  Y. 

LOVE  AS  A   TEST   OF    GOODNESS. 

"Epoora  6e,  TOV  rvpavvov  dvSpoav, 
Toy  ra.'i  *A<ppodiTOt 


,  OV 

ov  TO..  —  Euripides. 

I  WILL  again  re-state,  in  other  words  than  my  own, 
the  theory  we  are  now  going  to  test  by  the  actual 
facts  of  life.  '  The  assertion,'9  says  Professor  Hux- 
ley, '  that  morality  is  in  any  way  dependent  on  cer- 
tainphilosophical  problems,  produces  the  same  effect 
on  my  mind  as  if  one  should  say  that  a  man's  vision 
depends  on  his  theory  of  sight,  or  that  he  has  no  busi- 
ness to  be  sure  that  ginger  is  hot  in  his  mouth,  unless 
he  has  formed  definite  mews  as  to  the  nature  of  gin- 
ger S  Or,  to  put  the  matter  in  slightly  different 
language,  the  sorts  of  happiness,  we  are  told,  that  are 
secured  to  us  by  moral  conduct  are  facts,  so  far  as  re- 
gards our  own  consciousness  of  them,  as  simple,  as 
constant  and  as  universal,  as  is  the  perception  of  the 
outer  world  secured  to  us  by  our  eyesight,  or  as  the 
sensation  formed  on  the  palate  by  the  application  of 
ginger  to  it. 

Love,  for  instance,  according    to  this  view,  is  as 

101 


102  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

simple  a  delight  for  men  in  its  highest  forms  as  it  is 
for  animals  in  its  lowest.  What  George  Eliot  calls 
*  ihe  treasure  of  human  affection '  depends  as  little 
for  its  value  on  any  beliefs  outside  itself  as  does  the 
treasure  of  animal  appetite  ;  and  just  as  no  want  of 
religious  faith  can  deprive  the  animals  of  the  last,  so 
no  want  of  religious  faith  can  deprive  mankind  of 
the  first.  It  will  remain  a  stable  possession  to  us, 
amid  the  wreck  of  creeds,  giving  life  a  solemn  and 
intense  value  of  its  own.  It  will  never  fail  us  as  a 
sure  test  of  conduct.  Whatever  guides  us  to  this 
treasure  we  shall  know  is  moral ;  whatever  tends  to 
withdraw  us  from  it  we  shall  know  is  immoral. 

Such  is  the  positivist  theory  as  to  all  the  higher 
pleasures  of  life,  of  which  affection  confessedly  is 
one  of  the  chief,  and  also  the  most  obviously  hu- 
man. Let  us  proceed  now  from  generalities  to  special 
concrete  facts,  and  see  how  far  this  theory  is  borne  out 
by  them.  And  we  can  find  none  better  than  those 
which  are  now  before  us — the  special  concrete  facts 
of  affection,  and  of  sexual  affection  in  particular. 

The  affection  of  man  for  woman— or,  as  it  will  be 
best  to  call  it,  love — has  been  ever  since  time  was, 
one  of  the  chief  elements  in  the  life  of  man.  But  it 
was  not  till  Christianity  had  very  fully  developed 
itself  that  it  assumed  the  peculiar  importance  that 
is  now  claimed  for  it.  For  the  ancient  world  it  was 
a  passion  sure  to  come  to  most  men,  and  that  would 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF  GOODNESS.  103 

bring  joy  or  sorrow  to  them  as  the  case  might  be. 
The  worldly  wisdom  of  some  convinced  them  that  it 
gave  more  joy  than  sorrow ;  so  they  took  and  used 
it  as  long  as  it  chanced  to  please  them.  The  worldly 
wisdom  of  others  convinced  them  that  it  gave  more 
SOITOW  than  joy,  so  they  did  all  they  could,  like 
Lucretius,  to  school  themselves  into  a  contempt  for 
it.  But  for  the  modern  world  it  is  on  quite  a  differ- 
ent footing,  and  its  value  does  not  depend  on  such  a 
chance  balance  of  pains  and  pleasures.  The  latter 
are  not  of  the  same  nature  as  the  former,  and  so  can- 
not be  outweighed  by  them.  In  the  judgment  of  the 
modern  world, 

'Tis  better  to  have  loved  and  lost 
Than  never  to  liave  loved  at  all. 

To  love,  in  fact,  though  not  exactly  said  to  be  in- 
cumbent upon  all  men,  is  yet  endowed  with  some- 
thing that  is  almost  of  the  nature  of  a  duty.  If  a 
man  cannot  love,  it  is  looked  on  as  a  sort  of  moral 
misfortune,  if  not  as  a  moral  fault  in  him.  And 
when  a  man  can  love,  and  does  love  successfully, 
then  it  is  held  that  his  whole  nature  has  burst  out 
into  blossom.  The  imaginative  literature  of  the 
modern  world  centres  chiefly  about  this  human  cri- 
sis ;  and  its  importance  in  literature  is  but  a  reflec- 
tion of  its  importance  in  life.  It  is,  as  it  were,  the 
sun  of  the  world  of  sentiment — the  source  of  its 
lights  and  colours,  and  also  of  its  shadows.  It  is 


104  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

the  crown  of  man's  existence  ;  it  gives  life  its  high- 
est quality ;  and,  if  we  can  believe  what  those  who 
have  known  it  tell  us,  earth  under  its  influence 
seems  to  be  melting  into,  and  to  be  almost  joined 
with,  heaven. 

All  this  language,  however,  about  love,  no  matter 
how  true  in  a  certain  sense  it  may  be,  is  emphati- 
cally true  about  it  in  a  certain  sense  only,  and  is  by 
no  means  to  t>e  taken  without  reserve.  It  is  em- 
phatically not  true  about  love  in  general,  but  only 
about  love  as  modified  in  a  certain  special  way.  The 
form  of  the  affection,  so  to  speak,  is  more  important 
than  the  substance  of  it.  It  will  need  but  little  con- 
sideration to  show  us  that  this  is  so.  Love  is  a 
thing  that  can  take  countless  forms ;  and  were  not 
the  form,  for  the  modern  world,  the  thing  of  the 
first  importance,  the  praise  bestowed  upon  all  forms 
of  it  would  be  equal,  or  graduated  only  with  refer- 
ence to  intensity.  But  the  very  reverse  of  this  is 
the  case  really.  In  our  estimate  of  an  affection,  its 
intensity,  though  doubtless  of  great  importance,  is 
yet  of  an  importance  that  is  clearly  secondary.  Else 
things  that  the  modern  world  regards  as  the  most 
abominable  might  be  on  a  level  with  the  things  it  re- 
gards as  most  pure  and  holy  ;  the  lovers  of  Athens 
might  even  put  to  shame  with  their  passion  the  calm 
sacramental  constancy  of  many  a  Christian  pair  ; 
and  the  whole  fabric  of  modern  morals  would  be 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF  GOODNESS.  105 

undermined.  For,  according  to  the  modern  concep- 
tion of  morals,  love  can  not  only  give  life  its  highest 
quality,  but  its  lowest  also.  If  it  can  raise  man  to 
the  angels,  it  can  also  sink  him  below  the  beasts  ; 
and  as  to  its  intensity,  it  is  a  force  which  will  carry 
him  in  the  one  direction  just  as  well  as  the  other. 
Kind  and  not  degree  is  the  first  thing  needful.  It 
is  the  former,  and  not  the  latter,  that  essentially 
separates  David  and  Jonathan  from  Harmodius  and 
Aristogeiton,  St.  Elizabeth  from  Cleopatra,  the  be- 
loved disciple  from  Antinous.  How  shall  we  love  ? 
"is  the  great  question  for  us.  It  comes  long  before, 
How  much  shall  we  love  ? 

Let  us  imagine  a  bride  and  bridegroom  of  the  type 
that  would  now  be  most  highly  reverenced,  and  try 
to  understand  something  of  what  their  affection  is. 
It  is,  of  course,  impossible  here  to  treat  such  a  sub- 
ject adequately ;  for,  as  Mr.  Carlyle  says,  '  except 
musically,  and  in  tlie  language  of  poetry,  it  can 
hardly  be  so  much  as  spoken  about.'1  But  enough 
for  the  present  purpose  can  perhaps  be  said.  In  the 
first  place,  then,  the  affection  in  question  will  be 
seen  to  rest  mainly  upon  two  things — firstly,  on  the 
consciousness  of  their  own  respective  characters  on 
the  part  of  each  ;  and,  secondly,  on  the  idea  formed 
by  each  of  the  character  of  the  other.  Each  must 
have  a  faith,  for  instance,  in  his  or  her  own  purity, 
and  each  must  have  a  like  faith  also  in  the  purity  of 


106  *8  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

the  other.  Thus,  to  begin  with  the  first  requisites, 
a  man  can  only  love  a  woman  in  the  highest  sense 
when  he  does  so  with  a  perfectly  clear  conscience. 
There  must  be  no  obstacle  between  them  which 
shocks  his  sense  of  right,  or  which,  if  known  by  the 
woman,  would  shock  hers.  Were  the  affection  in- 
dulged in,  in  spite  of  such  an  obstacle,  its  fine  qual- 
ity would  be  injured,  no  matter  how  great  its  inten- 
sity ;  and,  instead  of  a  moral  blessing,  it  would  be- 
come a  moral  curse.  An  exquisite  expression  of  the 
necessity  of  this  personal  sense  of  Tightness  may  be 
read  into  the  well-known  lines, 

I  could  not  love  thee,  dear,  so  well, 
Loved  I  not  honour  more. 

Nor  shall  we  look  on  honour  here  as  having  refer- 
ence only  to  external  acts  and  conditions.  It  has 
reference  equally,  if  not  more,  to  the  inw^ard  state 
of  the  heart.  The  man  must  be  conscious  not  only 
that  he  is  loving  the  right  woman,  but  that  he  ia 
loving  her  in  the  right  way.  '  If  1 loved  not  purity 
more  than  you?  he  would  say  to  her,  '/  were  not 
worthy  of  you.'' 

And  further,  just  as  he  requires  to  possess  this 
taintless  conscience  himself,  so  does  he  require  to  be 
assured  that  the  like  is  possessed  by  her.  Unless 
he  knows  that  she  loves  purity  more  than  him,  there 
is  no  meaning  in  his  aspiration  that  he  may  be 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF  GOODNESS.  1Q7 

found  worthy  of  her.  The  gift  of  her  affection  that 
is  of  such  value  to  him,  is  not  of  value  because  it  is 
affection  simply,  but  because  it  is  affection  of  a  high 
kind  ;  and  its  elevation  is  of  more  consequence  to 
him  than  its  intensity,  or  even  than  its  continuance. 
He  would  sooner  that  at  the  expense  of  its  intensity 
it  remained  pure,  than  that  at  the  expense  of  its 
purity  it  remained  intense.  Othello  was  certainly 
not  a  husband  of  the  highest  type,  and  yet  we  see 
something  of  this  even  in  his  case.  His  sufferings 
at  his  wife's  supposed  inconstancy  have  doubtless 
in  them  a 'large  selfish  element.  Much  of  them  is 
caused  by  the  mere  passion  of  jealousy.  But  the 
deepest  sting  of  all  does  not  lie  here.  It  lies  rather 
in  the  thought  of  what  his  wife  has  done  to  herself, 
than  of  what  she  has  done  to  him.  This  is  what 
overcomes  him. 

The  bawdy  wind,  that  kisses  att  it  meets, 
Is  hushed  within  the  holloio  mine  of  earth, 
And  mil  not  hear  it. 

He  could  have  borne  anything  but  a  soul's  tragedy 
like  this : 

Alas  !  to  make  me 
A  fixed  figure  for  the  time  of  scorn 
To  point  his  slow  unmoving  finger  at! 
Yet  I  could  bear  that  too,  well — very  wett  : 
But  there,  where  I?iave  garnered  up  my  heart, 
Where  I  must  either  live,  or  bear  no  life  ; 


108  J3  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

1  he  fountain  from  the  which  my  current  runs 
Or  else  dries  up  ;  to  be  discarded  thence  1 
Or  keep  it  as  a  cistern  for  foul  toads 
To  knot  and  gender  in  ! 

Whenever  he  was  with  her,  Desdemona  might  still 
be  devoted  to  him.  She  might  only  give  to  Cassio 
what  she  could  not  give  to  her  husband.  But  to 
Othello  this  would  be  no  comfort.  The  fountain 
would  be  polluted  ifrom  which  his  current  runs '  ; 
and  though  its  waters  might  still  flow  for  him,  he 
would  not  care  to  touch  them.  If  this  feeling  is 
manifest  in  such  a  love  as  Othello's,  much  more  is  it 
manifest  in  love  of  a  higher  type.  It  is  expressed 
thus,  for  instance,  by  the  heroine  of  Mrs.  Craven's 
1  R'ecit  cFune  Soeur.'  1J  can  indeed  say J  she  says, 
*  that  we  never  loved  each  other  so  much  as  when  we 
saw  how  we  both  loved  God : '  and  again,  '  My  hus- 
band would  not  have  loved  me  as  he  did,  if  lie  had  not 
loved  God  a  great  deal  more?  This  language  is  of 
course  distinctly  religious  ;  but  it  embodies  a  mean- 
ing that  is  appreciated  by  the  positive  school  as  well. 
In  positivist  language  it  might  be  expressed  thus  : 
'  My  husband  would  not  have  loved  me  as  he  did,  if 
he  would  not,  sooner  than  love  me  in  any  oilier  way, 
have  ceased  to  love  me  altogether :'  It  is  clear  that 
this  sentiment  is  proper,  nay  essential,  to  positivist 
affection,  just  as  well  as  to  Christian.  Any  pure  and 
exalted  love  would  at  once  cnange  its  character,  if, 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF  GOODNESS.  109 

without  any  further  change,  it  merely  believed  it 
were  free  to  change  it.  Its  strongest  element  is  the 
consciousness,  not  that  it  is  of  such  a  character  only, 
but  that  this  character  is  the  right  one.  The  ideal 
bride  and  bridegroom,  the  ideal  man  and  wife,  would 
not  value  purity  as  they  are  supposed  to  do,  did  they 
not  believe  that  it  was  not  only  different  from  im- 
purity, but  essentially  and  incalculably  better  than 
it.  For  the  positivist,  just  as  much  as  the  Christian, 
this  sense  of  rightness  in  love  is  interfused  with  the 
affection  proper,  and  does  as  it  were  give  wings  to  it. 
It  far  more  than  makes  good  for  the  lovers  any  loss 
of  intensity  that  may  be  created  by  the  chastening 
down  of  passion  :  and  figuratively  at  least,  it  may 
be  said  to  make  them  conscious  that  '  underneath 
them  are  the  everlasting  arms.'' 

Here  then  in  love,  as  the  positive  school  at  present 
offer  it  to  us,  are  all  these  three  characteristics  to 
which  that  school,  as  we  have  seen,  must  renounce 
all  right.  It  is  characterised  as  conforming  to  some 
special  and  absolute  standard,  of  which  no  positive 
account  can  be  given  ;  the  conformity  is  inward,  and 
so  cannot  be  enforced ;  and  for  all  that  positive 
knowledge  can  show  us,  its  importance  may  be  a 
dream. 

We  shall  realise  this  better  if  we  consider  a  love 
from  which  these  three  characteristics  have,  as  far  as 
possible,  been  abstracted — a  love  which  professes 


HO  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

frankly  to  rest  upon  its  own  attractions,  and  which 
repudiates  all  such  epithets  as  worse  or  better.  This 
will  at  once  show  us  not  only  of  what  various  de- 
velopments the  passion  of  love  is  capable,  but  also 
how  false  it  is  to  imagine  that  the  highest  kind 
need  naturally  be  the  most  attractive. 

I  have  quoted  Othello,  and  Mrs.  Craven's  heroine 
as  types  of  love  when  religionized.  We  will  go  to 
the  modern  Parisian  school  for  the  type  of  love 
when  dereligionized — a  school  which,  starting  from 
the  same  premisses  as  do  the  positive  moralists,  yet 
come  to  a  practical  teaching  that  is  singularly  differ- 
ent. And  let  us  remember  that  just  as  the  ideal  we 
have  been  considering  already,  is  the  ideal  most  ar- 
dently looked  to  by  one  part  of  the  world,  so  is  the 
ideal  we  are  going  to  consider  now,  looked  to  with  an 
equal  ardour  by  another  part  of  the  world.  The  writ- 
er in  particular  from  whom  I  am  about  to  quote  has 
been  one  of  the  most  popular  of  all  modern  roman- 
cers ;  and  has  been  hailed  by  men  of  the  most  fastidi- 
ous culture  as  a  preacher  to  these  latter  generations 
of  a  bolder  and  more  worthy  gospel.  *  TTi-isJ  '  says 
one  of  the  best  known  of  our  living  poets,  of  the  work 
that  I  select  to  quote  from— 

Tills  is  the  golden  book  of  spirit  and  sense, 
TJie  holy  vrrit  of  beauty. 

1  Mr.  A.  C.  Swinburne. 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF  GOODNESS. 

Of  tliis  '  holy  writ '  the  chief  theme  is  love.    Let  us 
go  on  to  see  how  love  is  there  presented  to  us. 

'  You  know,'  says  Theophile  Gau tier's  best-known 
hero,  in  a  letter  to  a  friend,  '  you  Jcnow  the  eagerness 
with  which  I  have  sought  for  physical  beauty,  the 
importance  I  attach  to  outward  form,  and  how  the 
world  I  am  in  lone  with  is  the  world  that  the  eyes  can 
see :  or  to  put  the  matter  in  more  conventional  lan- 
guage, I  am  so  corrupt  and  blase  that  my  faith  in 
moral  beauty  is  gone,  and  my  power  of  striving  af- 
ter it  also.  1  have  lost  the  faculty  to  discern  between 
good  and  evil,  and  this  loss  has  well  nigh  brought 
me  bacJc  to  the  ignorance  of  the  child  or  savage.  To 
tell  the  plain  truth,  nothing  seems  to  me  to  be  worthy 
either  of  praise  or  blame,  and  I  am  but  little  per- 
turbed by  even  the  most  abnormal  actions.  My  con- 
science is  deaf  and  dumb.  Adultery  seems  to  me  the 
most  commonplace  thing  possible.  I  see  nothing 
sJwcJdng  in  a  young  girl  selling  herself  S  .  .  .  . 
'  I  find  that  the  earth  is  all  as  fair  as  heaven,  and  vir- 
tue for  me  is  nothing  but  the  perfection  of  form.'' 
*  Many  a  time  and  long,"1  he  continues  farther  on, 
'  have  I  paused  in  some  cathedral,  under  the  shad- 
ow of  the  marble  foliage,  when  the  lights  were  quiv- 
ering in  through  the  stained  windows,  when  the 
organ  unbidden  made  a  low  murmuring  of  itself, 
and  the  wind  was  breathing  amongst  the  pipes  ;  and 
I  haw  plunged  my  gaze  far  into  the  pale  blue  depths 


112  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

of  ftie  almond-shaped  eyes  of  the  Madonna.  I  have 
followed  with  a  tender  reverence  the  curves  of  that 
wasted  figure  of  hers,  and  the  arch  of  her  eyebrows, 
just  visible  and  no  more  than  that.  I  have  admired 
her  smooth  and  lustrous  brow,  her  temples  with  their 
transparent  chastity,  and  her  cheeks  shaded  with  a 
sober  virginal  colour,  more  tender  than  the  colour  of 
a  peach-flower .  I  have  counted  one  by  one  the  fair 
and  golden  lashes  that  threw  their  tremulous  shade 
upon  it.  I  have  traced  out  with  care  in  the  subdued 
tone  that  surrounds  her,  the  evanescent  lines  of  her 
throat,  so  fragile  and  inclined  so  modestly.  I  have 
even  lifted  with  an  adventuring  hand  the  folds  of 
her  tunic,  and  have  seen  unveiled  that  bosom,  maid- 
en and  full  of  milk,  that  has  never  been  pressed  by 
any  except  divine  lips.  I  have  traced  out  the  rare 
clear  veins  of  it,  even  to  their  faintest  branchings. 
I  have  laid  my  finger  on  it,  to  draw  the  white  drops 
forth,  of  the  draught  of  heaven.  I  have  so  much 
as  touched  with  my  lips  the  very  bud  of  the  rosa 
mystica. 

'  Well,  and  I  confess  it  honestly,  all  this  imma- 
terial beauty,  this  thing  so  winged  and  so  aerial 
that  one  knows  well  enough  it  is  soon  going  to  fly 
away  from  one,  has  never  moved  me  to  any  great 
degree.  I  love  the  Venus  Anadyomene  better,  better 
a  thousand  times.  These  old-world  eyes,  slightly 
raised  at  the  corners!  these  lips  so  pure  and  so 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF  GOODNESS.  H3 

firmly  chiselled,  so  amorous,  and  so  fit  for  kissing  ! 
this  low,  broad  brow  !  these  tresses  with  the  curves 
in  them  of  the  sea  water,  and  bound  behind  her 
head  in  a  knot,  negligently  !  these  firm  and  shining 
shoulders  !  this  back,  with  its  thousand  alluring 
contours  !  all  these  fair  and  rounded  outlines,  this 
air  of  superhuman  vigour  in  a  body  so  divinely 
feminine — all  this  enraptures  and  enchants  me  in 
a  way  of  which  you  can  have  no  idea — you  the 
CJiristian  and  tJie  philosopher. 

'  Mary,  despite  the  humble  air  affected  by  her,  is 
a  deal  too  haughty  for  me.  It  is  as  much  as  her 
foot  does,  swathed  in  its  white  coverings,  if  it  just 
touches  the  earth,  now  purpling  where  the  old  ser- 
pent writhes.  Her  eyes  are  the  loveliest  eyes  in  the 
world ;  but  they  are  always  turned  heavenwards, 
or  else  they  are  cast  down.  They  never  look  you 
straight  in  the  face.  TJiey  have  never  served  as 
the  mirror  of  a  human  form.  .  .  .  Venus  comes 
from  the  sea  to  take  possession  of  the  world,  as  a 
goddess  who  loves  men  should — quite  naked  and 
quite  alone.  Earth  is  more  to  her  liking  than  is 
Olympus,  and  amongst  her  lovers  she  has  more  men 
than  gods.  She  drapes  herself  in  no  faint  veils  of 
mystery.  She  stands  straight  upright,  her  dolphin 
behind  her,  and  her  foot  i;pon  her  opal-coloured 
shell.  The  sun  strikes  full  upon  her  smooth  limbs, 
and  her  white  Jiand  holds  in  air  the  waves  of  her 

8 


114          IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

fair  locks,  wJiich  old  father  Ocean  has  sprinkled 
with  his  most  perfect  pearls.  One  can  see  her. 
SJie-  hides  nothing  ;  for  modesty  was  only  made  for 
those  who  have  no  beauty.  It  is  an  invention  of 
the  modern  world;  the  child  of  the  Christian  con- 
tempt for  form  and  matter. 

'  Oh  ancient  world  !  all  that  you  held  in  reverence 
is  held  in  scorn  by  us.  Thine  idols  are  overthrown 
in  the  dust;  fleshless  anchorites  clad  in  rags  and 
tatters,  martyrs  with  the  blood  fresh  on  them,  and 
their  shoulders  torn  by  the  tigers  of  thy  circuses, 
have  perched  themselves  on  the  pedestals  of  thy  fair 
desirable  gods.  The  Christ  has  enveloped  the  whole 
world  in  his  winding-sheet.  .  .  .  Oh  purity,  plant 
of  bitterness,  born  on  a  blood-soaked  soil,  and  whose 
degenerate  and  sickly  blossom  expands  loitJi  diffi- 
culty in  the  dank  sliade  of  cloisters,  under  a  chill 
baptismal  rain;  rose  without  scent,  and  spiked  all 
round  with  thorns,  thou  hast  taken  the  place  for  us 
of  the  glad  and  gracious  roses,  bathed  with  nard 
and  wine,  of  the  dancing  girls  of  Sybaris  ! 

'  The  ancient  world  knew  thee  not,  oh  sterile 
flower !  thou  wast  never  enwoven  in  its  cliaplets  of 
delirious  perfume.  In  that  vigorous  and  healthy 
society  they  would  Jiave  spurned  thee  under  foot 
disdainfully.  Purity,  mysticism,  melancholy  — 
three  words  unknown  to  thee,  three  new  maladies 
brought  into  our  life  by  the  Christ !  .  .  .  For  me, 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF  GOODNESS.  115 

/  look  on  woman  in  the  old  world  manner,  like  a  fair 
slave,  made  only  for  our  pleasures.  Christianity, 
in  my  eyes,  has  done  nothing  to  rehabilitate  her.  .  .  . 
To  say  the  truth,  1  cannot  conceive  for  what  reason 
there  should  be  this  desire  in  woman  to  be  looked  on 
as  on  a  level  with  men.  .  .  .  I  have  made  some  love- 
verses  in  my  time,  or  at  least  something  that  aspired 
to  pass  for  such  .  .  .  and  tltere  is  not  a  vestige  in 
them  of  the  modern  feeling  of  love.  .  .  .  There  is 
nothing  there,  as  in  all  the  love-poetry  since  the 
CJiristian  era,  of  a  soul  which,  because  it  loves,  begs 
another  soul  to  love  it  back  again;  nothing  there 
of  a  blue  and  shining  lake,  which  begs  a  stream  to 
pour  itself  into  its  bosom,  that  both  together  they 
may  mirror  the  stars  of  heaven  ;  nothing  there  of  a 
pair  of  ring-doves,  opening  their  wings  together,  that 
they  may  both  together  fly  to  the  same  nest?* 

Such  is  the  account  the  hero  gives  of  the  nature 
of  his  love  for  woman.  Nor  does  he  give  this  ac- 
count regretfully,  or  think  that  it  shows  him  to  be 
in  any  diseased  condition.  It  shows  rather  a  return, 
on  his  part,  to  a  health  that  others  have  lost.  As 
he  looks  round  upon  the  modern  world  and  the 
purity  that  George  Eliot  says  in  her  verses  she 
would  die  for,  '  Woman?  he  exclaims  mournfully, 
lis  become  the  symbol  of  moral  and  physical  beau- 
ty. The  real  fall  of  man  was  on  tlie  birthday  of 

1  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin,  pp.  213-222.     Ed.  Paris.     1875. 


IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

tlie  babe  of  Bethlehem.'9  '  It  will  be  instructive  to 
notice  further  that  these  views  are  carried  out  by 
him  to  their  full  legitimate  consequences,  even 
though  this,  to  some  degree,  is  against  his  will. 
'  Sometimes,''  he  says,  '  /  try  to  persuade  myself 
that  such  passions  are  abominable,  and  I  say  as 
much  to  myself  in  as  severe  a  way  as  I  can.  But 
the  words  come  only  from  my  lips.  They  are  argu- 
ments that  I  make.  They  are  not  arguments  that  1 
feel.  The  thing  in  question  really  seems  quite  nat- 
ural to  me,  and  anyone  else  in  my  place  would,  it 
seems  to  me,  do  as  I  do. ' " 

Nor  is  this  conception  of  love  peculiar  to  the  hero 
only.  The  heroine's  conception  is  its  exact  counter- 
part, and  exactly  fits  it.  The  heroine  as  completely 
as  the  hero  has  freed  herself  from  any  discernment 
between  good  and  evil.  She  recoils  from  abnormal 
impurity  no  more  than  from  normal,  and  the  climax 
of  the  book  is  her  full  indulgence  in  both. 

Now  here  we  have  a  specimen  of  love  raised  to  in- 
tensity, but  divested  as  far  as  possible  of  the  relig- 
ious element.  I  say  divested  as  far  as  possible,  be- 
cause even  here,  as  I  shall  prove  hereafter,  the  pro- 
cess is  not  complete,  and  something  of  religion  is 
still  left  fermenting.  But  it  is  quite  complete  enough 
for  our  present  purpose.  It  will  remind  us  in  the 
sharpest  and  clearest  way  that  love  is  no  force  which 

1  Mademoiselle  dc  Maupin,  p.  223.  s  Ibid.,  p.  225. 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF  GOODNESS.  H7 

is  naturally  constant  in  its  development,  or  which  if 
left  to  itself  can  be  in  any  way  a  moral  director  to 
us.  It  will  show  us  that  many  of  its  developments 
are  what  the  moralist  calls  abominable,  and  that  the 
very  worst  of  these  may  perhaps  be  the  most  at- 
tractive, and  be  deliberately  presented  to  us  as 
such  by  men  of  the  most  elaborate  culture.  We 
shall  thus  see  that  love  as  a  test  of  conduct,  as  an 
aim  of  life,  or  as  an  object  of  any  heroic  devotion, 
is  not  love  in  general,  but  love  of  a  special  kind,  and 
that  to  fulfil  this  function  it  must  not  only  be 
selected  from  the  rest,  but  also  removed  from  them, 
and  set  above  them  at  a  quite  incalculable  distance. 
And  the  kind  thus  chosen,  let  me  repeat  again  (for 
this,  though  less  obvious,  is  more  important  still), 
is  not  chosen  because  it  is  naturally  intense,  but  it 
becomes  intense  because  it  is  the  chosen  one. 

Here  then  lies  the  weak  point  in  the  position  of 
the  positive  moralists,  when  they  hold  up  such  love 
to  us  as  so  supreme  a  treasure  in  life.  They  observe, 
and  quite  correctly,  that  it  is  looked  upon  as  a  treas- 
ure ;  but  the  source  of  its  preciousness  is  something 
that  their  system  expressly  takes  from  it.  That 
choice  amongst  the  loves,  so  solemn  and  so  imperious 
and  yet  so  tender,  which  descends  like  a  tongue  of 
flame  upon  the  love  it  delights  to  honour ;  which 
fixes  on  a  despised  and  a  weak  affection,  taking  it 
like  Elisha  from  his  furrows,  or  like  David  from  his 


118  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

pastures,  setting  it  above  all  its  fellows,  and  making 
it  at  once  a  queen  and  prophetess — this  is  a  choice 
that  positivism  has  no  power  to  make  ;  or  which,  if 
it  makes,  it  makes  only  a  caprice,  or  a  listless  pref- 
erence. It  does  not,  indeed,  confound  pure  love 
with  impure,  but  it  sets  them  on  an  equal  footing ; 
and  those  who  contend  that  the  former  under  these 
conditions  is  intrinsically  more  attractive  to  men 
than  the  latter,  betray  a  most  naive  ignorance  of 
what  human  nature  is.  Supposing,  for  argument's 
sake,  that  to  themselves  it  may  be  so,  this  fact  is 
not  of  the  slightest  use  to  them.  It  is  merely  the 
possession  on  their  part  of  a  certain  personal  taste, 
which  those  who  do  not  share  it  may  regard  as  dis- 
ease or  weakness,  and  which  they  themselves  can 
neither  defend  nor  inculcate.  It  is  true  they  may 
call  their  opponents  hard  names  if  they  choose  ; 
but  their  opponents  can  call  them  hard  names  back 
again ;  but  in  the  absence  of  any  common  standard, 
the  recriminations  on  neither  side  can  have  the  least 
sting  in  them.  Could,  however,  any  argument  on 
such  a  matter  be  possible,  it  is  the  devotees  of  impu- 
rity that  would  have  the  strongest  case  ;  for  the 
pleasures  of  indulgence  are  admitted  by  both  sides, 
while  the  merits  of  abstention  are  admitted  by  only 
one. 

Let  us  go  back,  for  instance,  in  connection  with 
this  matter,  to  what  Professor  Huxley  has  told  us  is 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF  GOODNESS.  H9 

the  grand  result  of  education.  It  leads  us  away,  he 
says,  from  '  the  rank  and  steaming  valleys  of  sense,' 
up  to  the  '•highest  good?  which  is  l  discerned  by 
reason?  'resting  in  eternal  calm.'1  And  let  us  ask 
him  again,  what,  as  uttered  by  a  positivist,  these 
words  can  by  any  possibility  mean.  '  The  rank  and 
steaming  valleys  of  sense"1  \  Why  are  they  rank 
and  steaming  ?  Or,  if  they  are,  why  is  that  any  con- 
demnation of  them  ?  Or,  if  we  do  condemn  them,  what 
else  are  we  to  praise  ?  The  entire  raw  material,  not 
of  our  pleasures  only,  but  of  our  knowledge  also,  is 
given  us,,  say  the  positive  school,  by  the  senses. 
Surely  then  to  condemn  the  senses  must  be  to  con- 
demn life.  Let  us  imagine  Professor  Huxley  talk- 
ing in  this  way  to  Theophile  Gautier.  Let  us  ima- 
gine him  frowning  grimly  at  the  licentious  French- 
man, and  urging  him  with  all  vehemence  to  turn  to 
the  highest  good.  The  answer  will  at  once  be,  '  That 
is  exactly,  my  dear  Professor,  what  I  do  turn  to. 
And,  listen  J  he  might  say — the  following  is  again  a 
passage  from  his  own  writings — '•to  the  way  in 
which  I  figure  the  highest  good  to  myself.  It  is  a 
huge  building,  with  its  outer  walls  all  blind  and 
windowless  ;  a  huge  court  within,  surrounded  by  a 
colonnade  of  white  marble  ;  in  the  midst  a  musical 
fountain  with  a  jet  of  quick-silver  in  the  Arabian 
fashion  ;  leaves  of  orange-trees  and  pomegranates 
placed  alternately  ;  overhead  the  bluest  of  skies  and 


120  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

the  mellowest  of  suns  ;  great  long -nosed  greyhounds 
should  be  sleeping  here  and  there  ;  from  time  to  time 
barefoot  negr  esses  witli  golden  ankle -rings,  fair 
women  servants  wJiite  and  slender,  and  clad  in  rich 
strange  garments,  should  pass  between  the  Jiollow 
arches,  basket  on  arm,  or  urn  poised  on  head. '  Three 
things  give  me  pleasure,  gold,  marble,  and  purple — 
brilliance,  mass,  and  colour.  These  are  the  stuffs 
out  of  which  my  dreams  are  made;  and  all  my 
ideal  palaces  are  constructed  of  these  materials.'** 
What  answer  could  Professor  Huxley  make  to  this 
that  would  not  seem  to  the  other  at  once  barbarous 
and  nonsensical  ?  The  best  answer  he  could  make 
would  be  simply,  */  do  not  agree  with  you.1 
And  to  this  again  the  answer  would  at  once  be, 
'  That  is  because  you  are  still  7iampered  by  preju- 
dices, whose  only  possible  foundations  we  have  both 
removed;  and  because  I  am  a  man  of  culture,  and 
you  are  not? 

Let  us  also  consider  again  that  other  utterance  of 
Professor  Huxley's,  with  which  I  began  this  chap- 
ter. According  to  the  positive  view  of  morals,  he 
says,  those  special  sets  of  happiness  that  a  moral 
system  selects  for  us,  have  no  more  to  do  with  any 
theory  as  to  the  reason  of  their  selection,  than  a 
man's  sight  has  to  do  with  his  theory  of  vision,  or 
than  the  hot  taste  of  ginger  has  to  do  with  a  knowl- 

J  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin,  p.  222.  2  Ibid,,  p.  211. 


LOVE  AS  A    TEST  OF  GOODNESS.  121 

edge  of  its  analysis.  That  is  a  most  clear  and  suc- 
cinct statement  of  the  whole  positive  position  ;  and 
we  shall  now  be  able  to  profit  by  its  clearness,  and 
to  see  how  all  that  it  does  is  to  reveal  confusion.  In 
the  first  place,  Professor  Huxley's  comparisons 
really  illustrate  the  very  fact  that  he  designs  them 
to  invalidate.  It  is  precisely  on  Ms  theory  of  vision 
that  a  man's  sight  practically  does  depend.  All 
sight,  so  far  as  it  conveys  any  meaning  to  him,  is  an 
act  of  inference  ;  and  though  generally  this  process 
may  be  so  rapid  that  it  is  not  perceived  by  him,  yet 
the  doubt  often  felt  about  distant  or  unusual  objects 
will  make  him  keenly  conscious  of  it.  Whilst  as  to 
ginger  and  the  taste  produced  by  it,  the  moral  ques- 
tion is  not  whether  it  is  hot  or  not ;  but  whether  or 
no  it  will  be  for  our  advantage  to  eat  it ;  and  this 
resolves  itself  into  two  further  questions ;  firstly, 
whether  its  heat  is  pleasant,  and  secondly  whether 
its  heat  is  wholesome.  On  the  first  of  these  Profes- 
sor Huxley  throws  no  light  whatever ;  whilst  as  to 
the  second,  it  really  hangs  entirely  on  the  very  point 
that  he  cited  as  indifferent.  We  must  have  some 
knowledge,  even  though  it  be  only  vague  and  nega- 
tive, of  the  nature  of  a  food,  before  we  know  whether 
it  will  be  well  for  us  in  the  long  run  to  habitually 
eat  it,  or  to  abstain  from  it. 

Let  us  apply  this  illustration  to  love.     Professor 
Huxley' s  ginger  shall  stand  for  the  sort  of  love  he 


122  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

would  most  approve  of  ;  and  love,  as  a  whole,  will 
be  represented  by  a  varied  dessert,  of  which  ginger 
is  one  of  the  dishes.  Now  what  Professor  Huxley 
has  to  do  is  to  recommend  this  ginger,  and  to  show 
that  it  is  divided  by  an  infinite  gulf — say  from  prunes 
or  from  Huntley  and  Palmer's  biscuits.  But  how  is 
he  to  do  this  ?  To  say  that  ginger  is  hot  is  to  say 
nothing.  To  many,  that  may  condemn  instead  of 
recommending  it :  and  they  will  have  as  much  to 
say  for  their  own  tastes  if  they  rejoin  that  prunes 
and  biscuits  are  sweet.  If  he  can  prove  to  them 
that  what  they  choose  is  unwholesome,  and  that 
.if  they  eat  it  they  will  be  too  unwell  to  say  their 
prayers,  then,  supposing  they  want  to  say  their 
prayers,  he  will  have  gained  his  point.  But  if  he 
cannot  prove  that  it  is  unwholesome,  or  if  his  friends 
have  no  prayers  to  say,  his  entire  recommendation 
dwindles  to  a  declaration  of  his  own  personal  taste. 
But  in  this  case  his  whole  tone  will  be  different. 
There  will  be  nothing  in  it  of  the  moral  imperative. 
He  will  be  only  laughed  at  and  not  listened  to,  if  he 
proclaims  his  own  taste  in  sweetmeats  with  all  the 
thunders  of  Sinai.  And  the  choice  between  the  va- 
rious kinds  of  love  is,  on  positive  principles,  only  a 
choice  between  sweetmeats.  It  is  this,  and  nothing 
more,  than  this,  avowedly;  and  yet  the  positivists 
would  keep  for  it  the  earnest  language  of  the  Chris- 
tian, for  whom- it  is  a  choice,  not  between  sweetmeats 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF  GOODNESS.  123 

and  sweetmeats,  but  between  a  confectioner's  wafer 
and  the  Host. 

It  may  perhaps  be  urged  by  some  that,  according 
to  this  view  of  it,  purity  is  degraded  into  a  bitter 
something,  which  we  only  accept  reluctantly,  through 
fear  of  the  consequences  of  its  alternatives.  And  it 
is  quite  true  that  a  fear  of  the  consequences  of  wrong 
love  is  inseparably  connected  with  our  sense  of  the 
value  of  right  love.  But  this  is  a  necessity  of  the 
case  ;  the  quality  of  the  right  love  is  in  no  way 
lowered  by  it,  and  it  will  lead  us  to  consider  an- 
other important  point. 

It  is  impossible  to  hold  that  one  thing  is  incalcu- 
bly  better  than  others,  without  holding  also  that 
others  are  incalculably  worse  than  it.  Indeed,  the 
surest  test  we  can  give  of  the  praise  we  bestow  on 
what  we  choose,  is  the  measure  of  condemnation  we 
bestow  on  what  we  reject.  If  we  maintain  that  vir- 
tuous love  constitutes  its  own  heaven,  we  must  also 
maintain  that  vicious  love  constitutes  its  own  hell. 
If  we  cannot  do  the  last  we  certainly  cannot  do  the 
first.  And  the  positive  school  can  do  neither.  It 
can  neither  elevate  one  kind  of  love  nor  depress  the 
others  ;  and  for  this  reason.  The  results  of  love  in 
both  cases  are,  according  to  their  teaching,  bounded 
by  our  present  consciousness  ;  and  our  present  con- 
sciousness, divorced  from  all  future  expectation,  has 
no  room  in  it  for  so  vast  an  interval  as  all  moral  sys- 


124  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

terns  postulate  between  the  right  love  and  the  wrong. 
Indeed,  if  happiness  be  the  test  of  right,  it  cannot, 
as  a  general  truth,  be  said  that  they  are  practically 
separable  at  all.  It  is  notorious  that,  as  far  as  the 
present  life  goes,  a  man  of  even  the  vilest  affections 
may  effectually  elude  all  pain  from  them.  Some- 
times they  may  injure  his  health,  it  is  true ;  but 
they  need  not  even  do  that ;  and  if  they  do,  it 
necessitates  no  moral  condemnation  of  them,  for 
many  heroic  labours  would  do  just  the  same.  In- 
jury to  the  health,  at  any  rate,  is  a  mere  accident ; 
so  is  also  injury  to  the  reputation  ;  and  conditions 
are  easily  conceivable  by  which  both  these  dangers 
would  be  obviated.  The  supposed  evils  of  impurity 
have  but  a  very  slight  reference  to  these.  They  de- 
pend, not  on  any  present  consciousness,  but  on  the 
expectations  of  a  future  consciousness — a  conscious- 
ness that  will  reveal  things  to  us  hereafter  which  we 
can  only  augur  here. 

I  do  not  know  them  now,  but  after  death 
God  knows  I  know  the  faces  I  sliall  see  : 
Each  one  a  murdered  self  mth  last  low  breath, 
'  lam  thyself;  what  hast  thou  done  to  me  f  ' 
'  And  I,  and  I  thyself/  '  lo  each  one  saith, 
'And  thou  thyself,  to  all  eternity' 1 

Such  is  the  expectation  on  which  the  supposed  evils 

1  Dante  Gabriel  Rosetti. 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF  GOODNESS.  125 

of  impurity  depend.  According  to  positive  princi- 
ples, the  expectation  will  never  be  fulfilled ;  the 
evils  therefore  exist  only  in  a  diseased  imagination. 

And  with  the  beauty  of  purity  the  case  is  just  the 
same.  According  to  the  view  which  the  positivists 
have  adopted,  so  little  counting  the  cost  of  it,  a  pure 
human  affection  is  a  union  of  two  things.  It  is  not 
a  possession  only,  but  a  promise ;  not  a  sentiment 
only,  but  a  pre-sentiment ;  not  a  taste  only,  but  a 
foretaste  ;  and  the  chief  sweetness  said  to  be  found 
in  the  former,  is  dependent  altogether  upon  the  latter. 
'Blessed  are  the  pure  in  7ieart,for  they  shall  see 
God,7  is  the  belief  which,  whether  true  or  false  as  a 
fact,  is  implied  in  the  whole  modern  cultus  of  love, 
and  the  religious  reverence  with  which  it  has  come 
to  be  regarded.  In  no  other  way  can  we  explain 
either  its  eclecticism  or  its  supreme  importance. 
Nor  is  the  belief  in  question  a  thing  that  is  implied 
only.  Continually  it  is  expressed  also,  and  this 
even  by  writers  who  theoretically  repudiate  it. 
Goethe,  for  instance,  cannot  present  the  moral  as- 
pects of  Margaret's  love-story  without  assuming  it. 
And  George  Eliot  has  been  obliged  to  pre-suppose 
it  in  her  characters,  and  to  exhibit  the  virtues  she 
regards  as  noblest,  on  the  pedestal  of  a  belief  that 
she  regards  as  most  irrational.  But  its  completest 
expression  is  naturally  to  be  found  elsewhere.  Here, 
for  instance,  is  a  verse  of  Mr.  Robert  Browning's, 


126  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

who,  however  we  rank  him  otherwise,  is  perhaps  un- 
rivalled for  his  subtle  analysis  of  the  emotions  : 

Dear,  when  our  one  soul  understands 
The  great  soul  that  makes  all  things  neio, 

When  earth  breaks  up,  and  heaven  expands, 
How  mil  the  change  strike  me  and  you, 

In  the  house  not  made  with  hands  ? 

Here,  again,  is  another,  in  which  the  same  sentiment 
is  presented  in  a  somewhat  different  form : 

Is  there  nought  letter  than  to  enjoy  f 
No  deed  which  done,  Witt  make  time  break, 

Letting  us  pent-up  creatures  through. 

Into  eternity,  our  due — 
No  forcing  earth  teach  heaven's  employ? 

No  wise  beginning,  Jiere  and  now, 

Which  cannot  grow  complete  (earth's  feat) 

And  heaven  must  finish  there  and  then? 

No  tasting  earth's  true  food  for  men, 
Its  sweet  in  sad,  its  sad  in  sweet? 

To  the  last  of  these  verses  a  singular  parallel  may 
be  found  in  the  works  of  a  much  earlier,  and  a  very 
different  writer,  only  the  affection  there  dealt  with 
is  filial  and  not  marital.     In  spite  of  this  difference, 
however,  it  will  still  be  much  in  point. 

'  The  day  was  fast  approaching?  says  Augustine, 
'  lohereon  my  mother  was  to  depart  this  life,  when  it  hap- 
pened, Lord,  as  I  believe  by  thy  special  ordinance,  that  she 
and  I  were  alone  together,  leaning  in  a  certain  window  that 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF.   GOODNESS.  127 

looked  into  the  garden  of  the  house,  where  ice  were  then  stay- 
ing at  Ostia.  We  were  talking  togetJier  alone,  very  sweetly, 
and  were  wondering  ivliat  tlie  life  would  be  of  Gods  saints  in 
heaven.  And  when  our  discourse  was  come  to  that  point,  tliat 
the  highest  delight  and  brightest  of  all  the  carnal  senses  seemed 
not  Jit  to  be  so  much  as  named  with  that  lifes  sweetness,  we, 
lifting  ourselves  yet  more  ardently  to  the  Unchanging  One, 
did  by  degrees  pass  through  all  things  bodily — beyond  the 
heaven  even,  and  the  sun  and  stars.  Yea,  we  soared  higher 
yet  by  inward  musing.  We  came  to  our  own  minds,  and  we 
passed  beyond  them,  that  we  might  reach  that  place  of 
plenty,  where  TJioufeedest  Israel  for  ever  with  the  food  of 
truth,  and  where  life  is  the  Wisdom  by  which  aU  these 
things  are  made.  And  whilst  we  were  discoursing  and 
panting  after  her,  we  slightly  touched  on  her  with  the  whole 
effort  of  our  heart ;  and  we  sighed,  and  there  left  bound  the 
first  fruits  of  the  spirit,  and  came  back  again  to  the  sounds 
of  our  own  moutJis  —  to  our  own  finite  language.  And 
what  we  then  said  was  in  this  wise :  If  to  any  the  tumult  of 
ihefiesh  were  hushed,  hushed  the  images  of  the  earth  and  air 
and  looters,  hi(shed  too  the  poles  of  heaven,  yea  the  very  soul 
be.  hushed  to  Jierself,  and  by  not  thinking  on  self  transcend 
self,  hushed  aU  dreams  and  imaginary  revelations,  every 
tongue  and  every  sign,  and  whatever  exists  only  in  transition 
— if  these  should  aU  be  hushed,  having  only  roused  our  ears 
to  Him  that  made  them,  and  He  speak  alone,  not  by  them 
but  by  Himself,  that  we  might  hear  His  word,  not  through 
any  tongue  of  flesh,  nor  angeTs  voice,  nor  sound  of  thunder, 


128  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

nor  in  the  dark  riddle  of  a  similitude,  but  might  hear  Him, 
ichom  in  these  things  we  love — His  very  self  without  any  aid 
from  these  (even  as  we  two  for  that  brief  moment  had  touched 
the  eternal  Wisdom} — could  this  be  continued  on,  and  other 
visions,  far  unlike  it,  be  withdraion,  and  this  one  ravish  and 
absorb  and  wrap  up  its  beholders  amid  these  inward  joys,  so 
that  life  might  be  for  ever  like  that  one  moment  of  under- 
standing, were  not  this,  Enter  thou  into  the  joy  of  thy  Lord? 
And  wlien  shaU  that  be  ?  Shall  it  be  ivhen  we  rise  again, 
but  shaU  not  all  be  changed  ? ' ' 

In  this  exceedingly  striking  passage  we  have  the 
whole  case  before  us.  The  belief  on  which  modern 
love  rests,  and  which  makes  it  so  single  and  so 
sacred  is,  as  it  were,  drawn  for  us  on  an  enlarged 
scale :  and  we  see  that  it  is  a  belief  to  which  posi- 
tivism has  no  right.  The  belief,  indeed,  is  by  no 
means  a  modern  thing.  Rudiments  of  it  on  the  con- 
trary are  as  old  as  man  himself,  and  may  represent 
a  something  that  inheres  in  his  very  nature.  But 
none  the  more  for  this  will  it  be  of  any  service  to  the 
positivist ;  for  this  something  can  only  be  of  power 
or  value  if  the  prophecy  it  inevitably  developes  into 
be  regarded  as  a  true  one.  In  the  consciousness  of 
the  ancient  world  it  lay  undeciphered  like  the  dark 
sentence  of  an  oracle ;  and  though  it  might  be  re- 

1  Aug.  Conf.,  lib.  ix.  In  the  earlier  part  of  the  passage  the  extreme 
redundancy  of  the  original  has  been  curtailed  somewhat.  In  the  ren- 
dering here  given  I  have  to  a  great  extent  followed  Dr.  Pusey. 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF  GOODNESS.  129 

vered  by  some,  it  could  not  be  denied  by  any.  But 
its  meaning  is  now  translated  for  us,  and  there  is  a 
new  factor  in  the  case.  We  now  can  deny  it ;  and 
if  we  do,  its  whole  power  is  paralysed. 

This  when  once  recognised  must  be  evident  enough. 
But  a  curious  confusion  of  thought  has  prevented 
the  positive  school  from  seeing  it.  They  have  im- 
agined that  Avhat  religion  adds  to  love  is  the  hope 
of  prolongation  only,  not  of  development  also ;  and 
thus  we  find  Professor  Huxley  curtly  dismissing  the 
question  by  saying  that  the  quality  of  such  a  pleas- 
ure '  is  obviously  in  no  way  affected  by  the  abbrevia- 
tion or  prolongation  of  our  conscious  life?  How 
utterly  this  is  beside  the  point  may  be  shown  in- 
stantly by  a.  very  simple  example.  A  painter,  we 
will  say,  inspired  with  some  great  conception,  sets 
to  work  at  a  picture,  and  finds  a  week  of  the  in- 
tensest  happiness  in  preparing  his  canvas  and  laying 
his  first  colours.  Now  the  happiness  of  that  week 
is,  of  course,  a  fact  for  him.  It  would  not  have  been 
greater  had  it  lasted  a  whole  fortnight ;  and  it  would 
not  have  been  less  had  he  died  at  the  week's  end. 
But  though  obviously,  as  Professor  Huxley  says,  it 
in  no  way  depends  on  its  prolongation,  what  it  does 
depend  on  is  the  belief  that  it  will  be  prolonged,  and 
that  in  being  prolonged  it  will  change  its  character. 
It  depends  on  the  belief  on  the  painter's  part  that  he 
will  be  able  to  continue  his  painting,  and  that  as  he 
9 


130  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

continues  it,  his  picture  will  advance  to  completion. 
The  positivists  have  confused  the  true  saying  that 
the  pleasure  of  painting  one  picture  does  not  depend 
on  the  fact  that  we  shall  paint  many,  with  the  false 
saying  that  the  pleasure  of  beginning  that  one  does 
not  depend  on  the  belief  that  we  shall  finish  it.  On 
this  last  belief  it  is  plain  that  the  pleasure  does  de- 
pend, largely  if  not  entirely  ;  and  it  is  precisely  this 
last  belief  that  positivism  takes  away. 

To  return  again,  then,  to  the  subject  of  human 
love — we  are  now  in  a  position  to  see  that,  as  offered 
us  at  present  by  the  positive  school  of  moralists,  it 
cannot,  properly  speaking,  be  called  a  positive  pleas- 
ure at  all,  but  that,  it  is  still  essentially  a  religious 
one ;  and  that  when  the  religious  element  is  eradi- 
cated, its  entire  character  will  change.  It  may  be, 
of  course,  contended  that  the  religious  element  is  in- 
eradicable :  but  this  is  simply  either  to  call  positiv- 
ism an  impossibility,  or  religion  an  incurable  dis- 
ease. Here,  however,  we  are  touching  on  a  side 
issue,  which  I  shall  by  and  by  return  to,  but  which 
is  at  present  beside  the  point.  My  aim  now  is  not 
to  argue  either  that  positivism  can  or  cannot  be 
accepted  by  humanity,  but  to  show  what,  if  ac- 
cepted, it  will  have  to  offer  us.  I  wish  to  point  out 
the  error,  for  instance,  of  such  writers  as  George 
Eliot,  who,  whilst  denying  the  existence  of  any  sun- 
god  in  the  heavens,  are  yet  perpetually  adoring  the 
sunlight  on  the  earth  ;  who  profess  to  extinguish  all 


LOVE  AS  A   TEST  OF  GOODNESS.  131 

fire  on  principle,  and  then  offer  us  boiling  water  to 
supply  its  place  ;  or  who,  sending  love  to  us  as  a 
mere  Cassandra,  continue  to  quote  as  Scripture  the 
prophecies  they  have  just  discredited. 

Thus  far  what  we  have  seen  is  this.  Love  as  a 
positive  pleasure,  if  it  be  ever  reduced  to  such,  will 
be  a  very  different  thing  from  what  our  positivist 
moralists  at  present  see  it  to  be.  It  will  perform 
none  of  those  functions  for  which  they  now  look  to 
it.  It  will  no  longer  supply  them,  as  now,  with  any 
special  pinnacle  on  which  human  life  may  raise  it- 
self. The  one  type  of  it  that  is  at  present  on  an 
eminence  will  sink  to  the  same  level  as  the  others. 
All  these  will  be  offered  to  us  indiscriminately,  and 
our  choice  between  them  will  have  no  moral  value. 
None  of  the  ethical  epithets  by  which  these  varieties 
are  at  present  so  sharply  distinguished  from  each 
other  will  have  any  virtue  left  in  them.  Morality  in 
this  connection  will  be  a  word  without  a  meaning. 

I  have  as  yet  dealt  only  with  one  of  those  re- 
sources, which  have  been  supposed  to  impart  to  life 
a  positive  general  value.  This  one,  however,  has 
been  the  most  important  and  the  most  comprehen- 
sive of  all ;  and  its  case  will  explain  that  of  the 
others,  and  perhaps,  with  but  few  exceptions,  in- 
clude them.  One  or  two  of  these  others  I  shall  by 
and  by  treat  separately ;  but  we  will  first  enquire 
into  the  results  on  life  of  the  change  we  have  been 
considering  already. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

LIFE  AS   ITS   OWN   REWARD. 

'  If  in  this  life  only  we  have  hope ' 

WHAT  we  have  now  before  us  is  a  certain  subtrac- 
tion sum.  We  have  to  take  from  life  one  of  its 
strongest  present  elements ;  and  see  as  well  as  we 
can  what  will  then  be  the  remainder.  An  exact  an- 
swer we  shall,  of  course,  not  expect ;  but  we  can 
arrive  at  an  approximate  one  without  much  diffi- 
culty. 

What  we  have  to  subtract  has  been  shown  in  the 
previous  chapter ;  but  it  may  again  be  described 
briefly  in  the  following  way.  Life  in  its  present 
state,  as  we  have  just  seen,  is  a  union  of  two  sets 
of  feelings,  and  of  two  kinds  of  happiness,  and  is 
partly  the  sum  of  the  two,  and  partly  a  compromise 
between  them.  Its  resources,  by  one  classification, 
are  separable  into  two  groups,  according  as  in  them- 
selves they  chance  to  repel  or  please  us;  and  the 
most  obvious  measure  of  happiness  would  seem  to 
be  nothing  more  than  our  gain  of  what  is  thus  pleas- 
ant, and  our  shirking  of  what  is  thus  painful.  But 
if  we  examine  life  as  it  actually  exists  about  us,  we 

132 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  133 

shall  see  that  this  classification  has  been  traversed 
by  another.  Many  things  naturally  repellent  have 
received  a  supernatural  blessing  ;  many  things  nat- 
urally pleasant  have  received  a  supernatural  curse  ; 
and  thus  our  highest  happiness  is  often  composed  of 
pain,  and  our  profoundest  misery  is  nearly  always 
based  on  pleasure.  Accordingly,  whereas  happiness 
naturally  would  seem  the  test  of  right,  right  has 
come  supernatu rally  to  be  the  test  of  happiness. 
And  so  completely  is  this  notion  engrained  in  the 
world' s  consciousness,  that  in  all  our  deeper  views 
of  life,  no  matter  whether  we  be  saints  or  sinners, 
right  and  wrong  are  the  things  that  first  appeal  to 
us,  not  happiness  and  misery.  A  certain  supernat- 
ural moral  judgment,  in  fact,  has  become  a  primary 
faculty  with  us,  and  it  mixes  with  every  estimate  we 
form  of  the  world  around  us. 

It  is  this  faculty  that  positivism,  if  accepted  fully, 
must  either  destroy  or  paralyse  ;  it  is  this,  therefore, 
that  in  imagination  we  must  now  try  to  eliminate. 
To  do  this — to  see  what  will  be  left  in  life  to  us,  with- 
out this  faculty,  we  must  first  see  in  general,  how 
much  is  at  present  dependent  on  it. 

This  might  at  first  sight  seem  a  hard  task  to  per- 
form ;  the  interests  we  shall  have  to  deal  with  are  so 
many  and  so  various.  But  the  difficulty  may  be 
eluded.  I  have  already  gone  to  literature  for  ex- 
amples of  special  feelings  on  the  part  of  individuals, 


134  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

and  under  certain  circumstances.  We  will  now  go 
to  it  for  a  kindred,  though  not  for  the  same  assist- 
ance ;  and  for  this  end  we  shall  approach  it  in  a 
slightly  different  way.  What  we  did  before  was 
this.  We  took  certain  works  of  literary  art,  and 
selecting,  as  it  were,  one  or  two  special  patches  of 
colour,  we  analysed  the  composition  of  these.  What 
we  shall  now  do  will  be  to  take  the  pictures  as  organic 
wholes,  with  a  view  to  analysing  the  effect  of  them 
as  pictures — the  harmony  or  the  contrast  of  their 
colours,  and  the  massing  of  their  lights  and  shadows. 
If  we  reflect  for  a  moment  what  art  is — literary  and 
poetical  art  in  particular — we  shall  at  once  see  how, 
examined  in  this  way,  it  will  be  of  use  to  us.  In  the 
first  place,  then,  what  is  art  ?  and  what  is  the  reason 
that  it  pleases  us  ?  It  is  a  reflection,  a  reproduction 
of  the  pleasures  of  life,  and  is  altogether  relative  to 
these,  and  dependent  on  them.  We  should,  for  in- 
stance, take  no  interest  in  portraits  unless  we  took 
some  interest  in  the  human  face.  We  should  take 
none  in  statues  if  we  took  none  in  the  human  form. 
We  must  know  something  of  love  as  a  feeling,  or  we 
should  never  care  for  love-songs.  Art  may  send  us 
back  to  these  with  intenser  appreciation  of  them,  but 
we  must  bring  to  art  from  life  the  appreciation  we 
want  intensified.  Art  is  a  factor  in  common  human 
happiness,  because  by  its  means  common  men  are 
made  partakers  in  the  vision  of  uncommon  men. 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  135 

Great  art  is  a  speculum  reflecting  life  as  the  keenest 
eyes  have  seen  it.  All  its  forms  and  imagery  are  of 
value  only  as  this.  Taken  by  themselves,  '  the  best  in 
this  kind  are  ~but  shadows?  We  have  to  ' piece  out 
their  imperfections,  with  our  thoughts /'  ''imagina- 
tion has  to  amend  them,''  and  '  it  must  be  our  imagin- 
ation, not  theirs.''  1  In  examining  a  work  of  art,  then, 
we  are  examining  life  itself  ;  or  rather,  in  examining 
the  interest  which  we  take  in  a  work  of  art,  in  exam- 
ining the  reasons  why  we  think  it  beautiful,  or  great, 
or  interesting,  we  are  examining  our  own  feelings  as 
to  the  realities  represented  by  it. 

And  now  remembering  this,  let  us  turn  to  certain 
of  the  world's  greatest  works  of  art — I  mean  its 
dramas  :  for  just  as  poetry  is  the  most  articulate  of 
all  the  arts,  so  is  the  drama  the  most  comprehensive 
form  of  poetry.  In  the  drama  we  have  the  very 
thing  we  are  now  in  want  of.  We  have  life  as  a 
whole — that  complex  aggregate  of  details,  which 
forms,  as  it  were,  the  mental  landscape  of  existence, 
presented  to  us  in  a  ' questionable  shape,1  at  once 
concentrated  and  intensified.  And  it  is  no  exagger- 
ation to  say  that  the  reasons  why  men  think  life  worth 

1  '  Hippolyta. — This  is  the  silliest  stuff  I  ever  heard.  Theseus. — 17te 
best  in  this  kind  are  but  shadows,  and  the  worst  no  worse,  if  imagination 
amend  them.  Hippohta. — It  must  be  your  imagination  then,  not  theirs.' 
— Midsummer's  Night's  Dream,  Act  V. 

'  Piece  out  our  imperfections  icith  your  thoughts.' — Prologue  to 
Henry  V. 


136  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

living,  can  be  all  found  in  the  reasons  why  they  think 
a  great  drama  great. 

Let  us  turn,  then,  to  some  of  the  greatest  works  of 
Sophocles,  of  Shakespeare,  and  of  Goethe,  and  con- 
sider briefly  how  these  present  life  to  us.  Let  us 
take  Macbeth,  Hamlet,  Measure  for  Measure,  and 
Faust.  "VVe  have  here  five  presentations  of  life, 
under  what  confessedly  are  its  most  striking  aspects, 
and  with  such  interests  as  men  have  been  able  to 
find  in  it,  raised  to  their  greatest  intensity.  Such,  at 
least,  is  the  way  in  which  these  works  are  regarded, 
and  it  is  only  in  virtue  of  this  estimate  that  they  are 
called  great.  Now,  in  producing  this  estimate,  what 
is  the  chief  faculty  in  us  that  they  appeal  to  ?  It 
will  need  but  little  thought  to  show  us  that  they 
appeal  primarily  to  the  supernatural  moral  judg- 
ment ;  that  this  judgment  is  perpetually  being  ex- 
pressed explicitly  in  the  works  themselves ;  and, 
which  is  far  more  important,  that  it  is  always  pre- 
supposed in  us.  In  other  words,  these  supreme  pres- 
entations of  life  are  presentations  of  men  struggling, 
or  failing  to  struggle,  not  after  natural  "happiness, 
but  after  supernatural  right ;  and  it  is  always  pre- 
supposed on  our  part  that  we  admit  this  struggle  to 
be  the  one  important  thing.  And  this  importance,  we 
shall  see  further,  is  based,  not  on  the  external  and  the 
social  consequences  of  conduct,  but  essentially  and 
primarily  on  its  internal  and  its  personal  consequences. 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  137 

In  Macbeth,  for  instance,  the  main  incident,  the 
tragic-colouring  matter  of  the  drama,  is  the  murder 
of  Duncan.  But  in  what  aspect  of  this  does  the  real 
tragedy  lie?  Not  in  the  fact  that  Duncan  is  mur- 
dered, but  in  the  fact  that  Macbeth  is  the  murderer. 
What  appals  us,  what  purges  our  passions  with  pity 
and  writh  terror  as  we  contemplate  it,  is  not  the  ex- 
ternal, the  social  effect  of  the  act,  but  the  personal, 
the  internal  effect  of  it.  As  for  Duncan,  he  is  in  his 
grave  ;  after  life's  fitful  fever  he  sleeps  well.  What 
our  minds  are  made  to  dwell  upon  is  not  that  Duncan 
shall  sleep  for  ever,  but  that  Macbeth  shall  sleep  no. 
more  ;  it  is  not  the  extinction  of  a  dynasty,  but  the 
ruin  of  a  character. 

We  see  in  Hamlet  precisely  the  same  thing.  The 
action  there  that  our  interest  centres  in,  is  the  hero's 
struggle  to  conform  to  an  internal  personal  standard 
of  right,  utterly  irrespective  of  use  to  others,  or  of 
natural  happiness  to  himself.  In  the  course  of  this 
struggle,  indeed,  he  does  nothing  but  ruin  the  happi- 
ness around  him  ;  and  this  ruin  adds  greatly  to  the 
pathos  of  the  spectacle.  But  we  are  not  indignant 
with  Hamlet,  as  being  the  cause  of  it.  We  should 
have  been  indignant  rather  with  him  if  the  case  had 
been  reversed,  and  if,  instead  of  sacrificing  social 
happiness  for  the  sake  of  personal  right,  he  had  sac- 
rificed personal  right  for  the  sake  of  social  happiness. 

In  Antigone  the  case  is  just  the  same,  only  there 


138  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

its  nature  is  yet  more  distinctly  exhibited.  We  have 
for  the  central  interest  the  same  personal  struggle 
after  right,  not  after  use  or  happiness ;  and  one  of 
the  finest  passages  in  that  whole  marvellous  drama 
is  a  distinct  statement  by  the  heroine  that  this  is  so. 
The  one  rule  she  says,  that  she  is  resolved  to  live  by, 
and  not  live  by  only,  but  if  needs  be  to  die  for,  is  no 
human  rule,  is  no  standard  of  man's  devising,  nor  can 
it  be  modified  to  suit  our  changing  needs ;  but  it  is 

The  unuritten  and  the  enduring  laws  of  God, 
Which  are  not  of  to-day  nor  yesterday, 
But  live  from  everlasting,  and  none  breathes 
Who  knows  them,  wJtence  begotten. 

In  Measure  for  Measure  and  Faust  we  can  see  the 
matter  reduced  to  a  narrower  issue  still.  In  both 
these  plays  we  can  see  at  once  that  one  moral  judg- 
ment at  least,  not  to  name  others,  is  before  all  things 
presupposed  in  us.  This  is  a  hard  and  fixed  judg- 
ment with  regard  to  female  chastity,  and  the  super- 
natural value  of  it.  It  is  only  because  we  assent  to 
this  judgment  that  Isabella  is  heroic  to  us  ;  and  pri- 
marily for  the  same  reason  that  Margaret  is  unfortu- 
nate. Let  us  suspend  this  judgment  for  a  moment, 
and  what  will  become  of  these  two  dramas  ?  The  ter- 
ror and  the  pity  of  them  will  vanish  instantly  like  a 
dream.  The  fittest  name  for  both  of  them  will  be 
'Much  Ado  about  Nothing.1 

It  will  thus  be  seen,  and  the  more  we  consider  the 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  139 

matter  the  more  plain  will  it  become  to  us — that  in 
all  such  art  as  that  which  we  have  been  now  consid- 
ering, the  premiss  on  which  all  its  power  and  great- 
ness rests  is  this  :  The  grand  relation  of  man  is  not 
first  to  his  brother  men,  but  to  something  else,  that 
is  beyond  humanity — that  is  at  once  without  and  al- 
so beyond  himself ;  to  this  first,  and  to  his  brother 
men  through  this.  We  are  not  our  own ;  we  are 
bought  with  a  price.  Our  bodies  are  God's  temples, 
and  the  joy  and  the  terror  of  life  depends  on  our 
keeping  these  temples  pure,  or  defiling  them.  Such 
are  the  solemn  and  profound  beliefs,  whether  con- 
scious or  unconscious,  on  which  all  the  higher  art  of 
the  world  has  based  itself.  All  the  profundity  and 
solemnity  of  it  is  borrowed  from  these,  and  exists 
for  us  in  exact  proportion  to  the  intensity  with  which 
we  hold  them. 

Nor  is  this  true  of  sublime  and  serious  art  only.  It 
is  true  of  cynical,  profligate,  and  concupiscent  art  as 
well.  It  is  true  of  Congreve  as  it  is  true  of  Sopho- 
cles ;  it  is  true  of  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin  as  it  is 
true  of  Measure  for  Measure.  This  art  differs  from 
the  former  in  that  the  end  presented  in  it  as  the  ob- 
ject of  struggle  is  not  only  not  the  morally  right,  but 
is  also  to  a  certain  extent  essentially  the  morally 
wrong.  In  the  case  of  cynical  and  profligate  art  this 
is  obvious.  For  such  art  does  not  so  much  depend 
on  the  substitution  of  some  new  object,  as  in  putting 


140  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

insult  on  the  present  one.  It  does  not  make  right 
and  wrong  change  places ;  on  the  contrary  it  careful- 
ly keeps  them  where  they  are ;  but  it  insults  the  for- 
mer by  transferring  its  insignia  to  the  latter.  It  is 
not  the  ignoring  of  the  right,  but  the  denial  of  it. 
Cynicism  and  profligacy  are  essentially  the  spirits 
that  deny,  but  they  must  retain  the  existing  affirma- 
tions for  their  denial  to  prey  upon.  Their  function 
is  not  to  destroy  the  good,  but  to  keep  it  in  lingering 
torture.  It  is  a  kind  of  spiritual  bear-baiting.  They 
hate  the  good,  and  its  existence  piques  them ;  but 
they  must  know  that  the  good  exists  none  the  less. 
'•Pd  no  sooner?  says  one  of  Congreve's  characters, 
lplay  with  a  man  that  slighted  his  ill-fortune,  than 
Pd  make  love  to  a  woman  who  undervalued  the  loss 
of  lier  reputation. '  In  this  one  sentence  is  contained 
the  whole  secret  of  profligacy  ;  and  profligacy  is  the 
same  as  cynicism,  only  it  is  cynicism  sensualized. 
Now  we  have  in  the  above  sentence  the  exact  coun- 
terpart to  the  words  of  Antigone  that  I  have  already 
quoted.  For  just  as  her  life  lay  in  conformity  to 
'  The  unwritten,  and  the  enduring  laws  of  God,''  so 
does  the  life  of  the  profligate  lie  in  the  violation  of 
them.  To  each  the  existence  of  laws  is  equally  es- 
sential. For  profligacy  is  not  merely  the  gratifica- 
tion of  the  appetites,  but  the  gratification  of  them  at 
the  expense  of  something  else.  Beasts  are  not  profli- 
gate. We  cannot  have  a  profligate  goat. 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD. 

In  what  I  have  called  concupiscent  art,  the  case 
might  seem  different,  and  to  a  certain  extent  it  is  so. 
The  objects  of  struggle  that  we  are  there  presented 
with  are  meant  to  be  presented  as  pleasures,  not  in 
defiance  of  right  and  wrong,  but  independently  of 
them.  The  chief  of  these,  indeed,  as  Theophile  Gau- 
tier  has  told  us,  are  the  physical  endearments  of  a 
man  and  a  woman,  with  no  other  qualification  than 
that  they  are  both  of  them  young  and  beautiful.  But 
though  this  art  professes  to  be  thus  independent  of 
the  moral  judgment,  and  to  trust  for  none  of  its  ef- 
fects to  the  discernment  between  good  and  evil,  this 
really  is  very  far  from  being  the  case.  Let  us  turn 
once  again  to  the  romance  we  have  already  quoted 
from.  The  hero  says,  as  we  have  seen  already,  that 
he  has  completely  lost  the  power  of  discernment  in 
question.  Now,  even  this,  as  might  be  shown  easily, 
is  not  entirely  true ;  for  argument' s  sake,  however,  we 
may  grant  him  that  it  is  so.  The  real  point  in  the  mat- 
ter to  notice  is  that  he  is  at  any  rate  conscious  of  the 
loss.  He  is  a  man  tingling  with  the  excitement  of  hav- 
ing cast  off  some  burden.  The  burden  may  be  gone,  but 
it  is  still  present  in  the  sharp  effects  of  its  absence. 
He  is  a  kind  of  moral  poacher,  who,  though  he  may 
not  live  by  law,  takes  much  of  his  life's  tone  from  the 
sense  that  he  is  eluding  it.  His  pleasures,  though  plea- 
surable in  themselves,  yet  have  this  quality  height- 
ened by  the  sense  of  contrast.  '  /  am  at  any  rate 


142  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

not  virtuous,'  his  mistress  says  to  him,  ' and  that 
is  always  something  gained.''  George  Eliot  says 
of  Maggie  Tulliver,  that  she  liked  her  aunt  Pul- 
let chiefly  because  she  was  not  her  aunt  Gleg. 
Theophile  Gautier's  hero  likes  the  Venus  Anadyo- 
mene,  partly  at  least,  because  she  is  not  the  Ma- 
donna. 

Nay,  let  us  even  descend  to  worse  spectacles — to 
the  sight  of  men  struggling  for  enjoyments  that  are 
yet  more  obviously  material,  more  devoid  yet  of  any 
trace  of  mind  or  morals,  and  we  shall  see  plainly,  if 
we  consult  the  mirror  of  art,  that  the  moral  element 
is  present  even  here.  We  shall  trace  it  even  in  such 
abnormal  literature  of  indulgence  as  the  erotic  work 
commonly  ascribed  to  Meursius.  We  shall  trace  it 
in  the  orgies  of  Tiberius  at  Capri ;  or  of  Quartilla,  as 
Petronius  describes  them,  at  Neapolis.  It  is  like  a 
ray  of  light  coining  in  at  the  top  of  a  dark  cavern, 
whose  inmates  see  not  it,  but  by  it ;  and  which  only 
brings  to  them  a  consciousness  of  shadow.  It  is  this 
supernatural  element  that  leavens  natural  passion, 
and  gives  its  mad  rage  to  it.  It  creates  for  it  *  a  twi- 
light inhere  virtues  are  vices.9  The  pleasures  thus 
sought  for  are  supposed  to  enthral  men  not  in  pro- 
portion to  their  intensity  (for  this  through  all  their 
varieties  would  be  probably  nearly  equal)  but  in 
proportion  to  their  lowness — to  their  sullying  power. 
Degradation  is  the  measure  of  enjoyment ;  or  rather 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  143 

it  is  an  increasing  numeral  by  which  one  constant 
figure  of  enjoyment  is  multiplied. 

Ah,  where  shall  we  go  then,  for  pastime, 
If  the  worst  that  can  be  Jtas  been  done  ? 

This  is  the  great  question  of  the  votaries  of  such  joys 
as  these. ' 

Thus  if  we  look  at  life  in  the  mirror  of  art,  we  shall 
see  how  the  supernatural  is  ever  present  to  us.  If 
we  climb  up  into  heaven  it  is  there  ;  if  we  go  down 
into  hell  it  is  there  also.  We  shall  see  it  at  the  bot- 
tom of  those  two  opposite  sets  of  pleasures,  to  the 
one  or  the  other  of  which  all  human  pleasures  be- 
long. The  source  of  one  is  an  impassioned  struggle 
after  the  supernatural  right,  or  an  impassioned 
sense  of  rest  upon  attaining  it ;  the  source  of  the 
other  is  the  sense  of  revolt  against  it,  which  in  vari- 
ous ways  flatters  or  excites  us.  In  both  cases  the 
supernatural  moral  .judgment  is  the  sense  appealed 
to,  primarily  in  the  first  case,  and  secondarily  if  not 
primarily  in  the  second.  All  the  life  about  us  is 
coloured  by  this,  and  naturally  if  this  be  destroyed 
or  wrecked,  the  whole  aspect  of  life  will  change  for 
us.  What  then  will  this  change  be  ?  Looking  still 
into  the  mirror  of  art,  the  general  character  of  it  will 

1  Seneca  says  of  virtue,  '  N&n  quia  delectat  placet,  sed  quia  placet 
delectat.'  Of  vice  in  the  same  way  we  may  say,  ' Non  quia  delectat 
pudet,  sed  quia  pudet  delectat.' 


144  -K  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

be  very  readily  perceptible.  I  noticed  just  now,  in 
passing,  how  Measure  for  Measure  and  Faust  would 
suffer  in  their  meaning  and  their  interest,  by  the  ab- 
sence on  our  part  of  a  certain  moral  judgment.  They 
would  become  like  a  person  singing  to  a  deaf  audi- 
ence— a  series  of  dumb  grimaces  with  no  meaning  in 
them.  The  same  thing  is  equally  true  in  all  the 
other  cases.  Antigone's  heroism  will  evaporate;' 
she  will  be  left  obstinate  only.  The  lives  of  Macbeth 
and  Hamlet  will  be  tales  of  little  meaning  for  us, 
though  the  words  are  strong.  They  will  be  full  of 
sound  and  fury,  but  they  will  signify  nothing. 
What  they  produce  in  us  will  be  not  interest  but  a 
kind  of  wondering  weariness — weariness  at  the 
weary  fate  of  men  who  could  '  think  so  Itrainsickly 
of  things?  So  in  like  manner  will  all  the  emphasis 
and  elaboration  in  the  literature  of  sensuality  be- 
come a  weariness  without  meaning,  also.  Congreve'  s 
caustic  wit  will  turn  to  spasmodic  truism  ;  and  Theo- 
phile  Gautier's  excess  of  erotic  ardour,  into  prolix 
and  fantastic  affectation.  All  its  sublimity,  its  bril- 
liance, and  a  large  part  of  its  interest,  depend  in  art 
on  the  existence  of  the  moral  sense,  and  would  in  its 
absence  be  absolutely  unproducible.  The  reason  of 
this  is  plain.  The  natural  pains  and  pleasures  of 

1  It  will  be  of  course  recollected  that  in  this  abstraction  of  the 
moral  sense,  we  have  to  abstract  it  from  the  characters  as  well  as 
ourselves. 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  145 

life,  merely  manipulated  by  the  imagination  and  the 
memory,  have  too  little  variety  or  magnitude  in 
them  without  further  aid.  Art  without  the  moral 
sense  to  play  upon,  is  like  a  pianist  whose  key- 
board is  reduced  to  a  single  octave. 

And  exactly  the  same  will  be  the  case  with  life. 
Life  will  lose  just  the  same  qualities  that  art  will- 
neither  more  nor  less.  There  will  be  no  introduction 
of  any  new  interests,  but  merely  the  elimination  of 
certain  existing  ones.  The  subtraction  of  the  moral 
sense  will  not  revolutionise  human  purposes,  but 
simply  make  them  listless.  It  will  reduce  to  a  parti- 
coloured level  the  whole  field  of  pains  and  pleasures. 
The  moral  element  gives  this  level  a  new  dimension. 
Working  underneath  it  as  a  subterranean  force,  it 
convulses  and  divides  its  surface.  Here  vast  areas 
subside  into  valleys  and  deep  abysses ;  there  moun- 
tain peaks  shoot  up  heavenwards.  Mysterious  shad- 
ows begin  to  throng  the  hollows ;  new  tints  and 
half -tints  flicker  and  shift  everywhere ;  mists  hang 
floating  over  ravines  and  precipices  ;  the  vegetation 
grows  more  various,  here  slenderer,  there  richer  and 
more  luxuriant ;  whilst  high  over  all,  bright  on  the 
topmost  summits,  is  a  new  strange  something — the 
white  snows  of  purity,  catching  the  morning  streaks 
on  them  of  a  brighter  day,  that  has  never  as  yet 
risen  upon  the  world  below. 

With  the  subtraction,  or  nullifying,  of  the  moral 
10 


146  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

force,  all  this  will  go.  The  mountains  will  sink,  the 
valleys  be  filled  up  ;  all  will  be  once  more  dead  level 
— still  indeed  parti-coloured,  but  without  light  and 
shadow,  and  with  the  colours  reduced  in  number, 
and  robbed  oJt  all  their  vividness.  The  chiaro-oscuro 
will  have  gone  from  life  ;  the  moral  landscape,  whose 
beauty  and  grandeur  is  at  present  so  much  extolled, 
will  have  dissolved  like  an  insubstantial  pageant. 
Vice  and  virtue  will  be  set  before  us  in  the  same  grey 
light ;  every  deeper  feeling  either  of  joy  or  sorrow, 
of  desire  or  of  repulsion,  will  lose  its  vigour,  and 
cease  any  more  to  be  resonant. 

It  may  be  said  indeed,  and  very  truly,  that  under 
favourable  circumstances  there  must  always  remain 
a  joy  in  the  mere  act  of  living,  in  the  exercising  of 
the  bodily  functions,  and  in  the  exciting  and  appeas- 
ing of  the  bodily  appetites.  Will  anything,  it  may 
be  asked,  for  instance,  rob  the  sunshine  of  its  glad- 
ness, or  deaden  the  vital  influence  of  a  spring  morn- 
ing ? — when  the  sky  is  a  cloudless  blue,  and  the  sea 
is  like  a  wild  hyacinth,  when  the  pouring  brooks 
seem  to  live  as  they  sparkle,  and  the  early  air 
amongst  the  woodlands  has  the  breath  in  it  of  un- 
seen violets  ?  All  this,  it  is  quite  true,  will  be  left 
to  us  ;  this  and  a  great  deal  more.  This,  however, 
is  but  one  side  of  the  picture.  If  life  has  its  own 
natural  gladness  which  is  expressed  by  spring,  it 
has  also  its  own  natural  sadness  which  is  expressed 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  147 

by  winter ;  and  the  worth  of  life,  if  this  is  all  we 
trust  to,  will  be  as  various  and  as  changing  as  the 
weather  is.  But  this  is  not  all.  Even  this  worth, 
such  as  it  is,  depends  for  us  at  present,  in  a  large 
measure,  upon  religion — not  directly  indeed,  but  in- 
directly. This  life  of  air,  and  nerve,  and  muscle, 
this  buoyant  consciousness  of  joyous  and  abounding 
health,  which  seems  so  little  to  have  connection  with 
faiths  or  theories,  is  for  us  impregnated  with  a  life 
that  is  impregnated  with  these,  and  thus  their  subtle 
influence  pervades  it  everywhere.  There  is  no  im- 
pulse from  without  which  stirs  or  excites  the  senses, 
that  does  not  either  bring  to  us,  or  send  us  on  to,  a 
something  beyond  itself.  In  each  of  these  pleasures 
that  seems  to  us  so  simple,  floats  a  swarm  of  hopes 
and  memories,  like  the  gnats  in  a  summer  twilight. 
There  is  not  a  sight,  a  sound,  a  smell,  not  a  breath 
from  sea  or  garden,  that  is  not  full  of  them,  and  on 
which,  busy  and  numberless,  they  are  not  wafted  into 
us.  And  each  of  these  volatile  presences  brings  the 
notions  of  right  and  wrong  with  it ;  and  it  is  these 
that  make  sensuous  life  tingle  with  so  strange  and 
so  elaborate  an  excitement.  Indirectly  then,  though 
not  directly,  the  mere  joy  in  the  act  of  living  will 
suffer  from  the  loss  of  religion,  in  the  same  manner, 
though  perhaps  not  in  the  same  degree,  as  the  other 
joys  will.  It  will  not  lose  its  existence,  but  it  will 
lose  zest.  The  fabric  of  its  pleasures  will  of  course 


143  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  t 

remain  what  it  ever  was  ;  but  its  brightest  inhabit- 
ants will  have  left  it.  It  will  be  as  desolate  as  May- 
fair  in  September,  or  as  a  deserted  college  during  a 
long  vacation. 

We  may  here  pause  in  passing,  to  remark  on  the 
shallowness  of  that  philosophy  of  culture,  to  be  met 
with  in  certain  quarters,  which,  whilst  admitting  all 
that  can  be  said  as  to  the  destruction  for  us  of  any 
moral  obligation,  yet  advises  us  still  to  profit  by  the 
variety  of  moral  distinctions.  '  Each  moment,'  says 
Mr.  Pater  for  instance,  '  some  form  grows  perfect  hi 
hand  or  face  ;  some  tone  on  the  hills  or  sea  is  choicer 
than  the  rest;  some  mood  of  passion  or  insight  or 
intellectual  excitement,  is  irresistibly  real  and  at- 
tractive for  us?  And  thus,  he  adds,  *  while  all  melts 
under  our  feet,  we  may  well  catch  at  any  exquisite, 
passion,  or  any  contribution  to  knowledge,  that 
seems  by  a  lifted  horizon  to  set  the  spirit  free  for  a 
moment,  or  any  stirring  of  the  senses,  strange  dyes, 
strange  flowers,  and  curious  odours,  or  the  work  of 
the  artist1  s  hand,  or  the  face  of  one's  friend.'  It  is 
plain  that  this  positive  teaching  of  culture  is  open  to 
the  same  objections,  and  is  based  on  the  same  fal- 
lacy, as  the  positive  teaching  of  morals.  It  does 
not  teach  us,  indeed,  to  let  right  and  wrong  guide  us 
in  the  choice  of  our  pleasures,  in  the  sense  that  we 
should  choose  the  one  sort  and  eschew  the  other ; 
but  teaching  us  to  choose  the  two,  in  one  sense  in- 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  149 

differently,  it  yet  teaches  us  to  choose  them  as  dis- 
tinct and  contrasted  things.  It  teaches  us  in  fact  to 
combine  the  two  fruits  without  confusing  their  fla- 
vours. But  in  the  case  of  good  and  evil,  as  has  been 
seen,  this  is  quite  impossible  ;  for  good  is  only  good 
as  the  thing  that  ought  to  be  chosen  ;  evil  is  only  evil 
as  the  thing  that  ought  not  to  be  chosen ;  and  the 
only  reasons  that  could  justify  us  in  combining  them 
would  altogether  prevent  our  distinguishing  them. 
The  teachings  of  positive  culture,  in  fact,  rest  on  the 
na'ive  supposition  that  shine  and  shadow,  as  it  were, 
are  portable  things  ;  and  that  we  can  take  bright  ob- 
jects out  of  the  sunshine,  and  dark  objects  out  of 
the  shadow,  and  setting  them  both  together  in  the 
diffused  grey  light  of  a  studio,  make  a  magical  mo- 
saic out  of  them,  of  gloom  and  glitter.  Or  such 
teachings,  to  put  the  matter  yet  more  simply,  are 
like  telling  us  to  pick  a  primrose  at  noonday,  and  to 
set  it  by  our  bed-side  for  a  night-light. 

It  is  plain  therefore  that,  in  that  loss  of  zest  and 
interest,  which  the  deadening  of  the  moral  sense,  as 
we  have  seen,  must  bring  to  life,  we  shall  get  no 
help  there.  The  massy  fabric  of  which  saints  and 
heroes  were  the  builders,  will  never  be  re-elected  by 
this  mincing  moral  dandyism. 

But  there  is  another  last  resource  of  the  modern 
school,  which  is  far  more  worthy  of  attention,  and 
which,  being  entirely  sui  generis,  I  have  reserved 


150  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

to  treat  of  here.  That  resource  is  the  devotion  to 
truth  as  truth  ;  not  for  the  sake  of  its  consequences, 
but  in  scorn  of  them.  Here  we  are  told  we  have  at 
least  one  moral  end  that  can  never  be  taken  away 
from  us.  It  will  still  survive  to  give  life  a  meaning, 
a  dignity,  and  a  value,  even  should  the  pursuit  of  it 
prove  destructive  to  all  the  others.  The  language 
used  by  the  modern  school  upon  this  subject  is  very 
curious  and  instructive.  I  will  take  two  typical  in- 
stances. The  common  argument,  says  Dr.  Tyndall, 
in  favour  of  belief  is  the  comfort  and  the  gladness 
that  it  brings  us,  its  redemption  of  life,  in  fact,  from 
that  dead  and  dull  condition  we  have  been  just  con- 
sidering. '  To  tJiisJ  he  says,  '•my  reply  is  tJiat  1 
choose  the  nobler  part  of  Emerson  when,  after  vari- 
ous disencJiantments,  he  exclaimed  "I  covet  truth ! " 
The  gladness  of  true  heroism  visits  the  heart  of  him 
who  is  really  competent  to  say  this?  The  following 
sentences  are  Professor  Huxley's:  ' If  it  is  demon- 
strated to  me,"1  he  says,  '•that  without  this  or  that 
theological  dogma  the  human  race  will  lapse  into 
bipedal  cattle,  more  brutal  than  the  beasts  by  rea- 
son of  their  greater  cleverness,  my  next  question  is 
to  ask  for  the  proof  of  the  dogma.  If  this  proof  is 
forthcoming,  it  is  my  conviction  that  no  drowning 
sailor  ever  clutched  a  hencoop  more  tenaciously  than 
mankind  will  hold  by  such  dogma,  whatever  it  may 
be.  But  if  not,  then  I  verily  believe  that  the  human 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  151 

race  will  go  its  own  evil  way  ;  and  my  only  consola- 
tion lies  in  the  reflection  that,  however  bad  our  pos- 
terity may  become,  so  long  as  they  hold  ~by  the  plain 
rule  of  not  pretending  to  Relieve  what  they  have  no 
reason  to  believe,  because  it  may  be  to  their  advan- 
tage so  to  pretend,  they  will  not  have  reached  the 
lowest  depths  of  immorality S  I  will  content  myself 
with  these  two  instances,  but  others  of  a  similar 
kind  might  be  multiplied  indefinitely. 

Now  by  a  simple  substitution  of  terms,  such  lan- 
guage as  this  will  reveal  at  once  one  important  fact 
to  us.  According  to  the  avowed  principles  of  posi- 
tive morality,  morality  has  no  other  test  but  happi- 
ness. Immorality,  therefore,  can  have  no  conceiva- 
ble meaning  but  unhappiness,  or  at  least  the  means 
to  it,  which  in  this  case  are  hardly  distinguishable 
from  the  end ;  and  thus,  according  to  the  above 
rigid  reasoners,  the  human  race  will  not  have  reached 
the  lowest  depths  of  misery  so  long  as  it  rejects  the 
one  thing  which  ex  hypothesl  might  render  it  less 
miserable.  Either  then  all  this  talk  about  truth 
must  really  be  so  much  irrelevant  nonsense,  or  else, 
if  it  be  not  nonsense,  the  test  of  conduct  is  some- 
thing distinct  from  happiness.  The  question  before 
us  is  a  plain  one,  which  may  be  answered  in  one  of 
two  ways,  but  which  positivism  cannot  possibly  an- 
swer in  both.  Is  truth  to  be  sought  only  because  it 
conduces  to  happiness,  or  is  happiness  only  to  be 


152  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

sought  for  when  it  is  based  on  truth  ?  In  the  latter 
case  truth,  not  happiness,  is  the  test  of  conduct. 
Are  our  positive  moralists  prepared  to  admit  this  \ 
If  so,  let  them  explicitly  and  consistently  say  so. 
Let  them  keep  this  test  and  reject  the  other,  for  the 
two  cannot  be  fused  together. 


r  aXeiqxx  r  iyx^a^  ravrcS  HVTEI 
av  ou  cpiX.oiv 


This  inconsistency  is  here,  however,  only  a  side  point 
—  a  passing  illustration  of  the  slovenliness  of  the 
positivist  logic.  As  far  as  my  present  argument  goes, 
we  may  let  this  pass  altogether,  and  allow  the  joint 
existence  of  these  mutually  exclusive  ends.  What 
I  am  about  to  do  is  to  show  that  on  positive  grounds 
the  last  of  these  is  more  hopelessly  inadequate  than 
the  first  —  that  truth  as  a  moral  end  has  even  more  of 

x 

religion  in  its  composition  than  happiness,  and  that 
when  this  religion  goes,  its  value  will  even  more 
hopelessly  evaporate. 

At  first  sight  this  may  seem  impossible.  The  de- 
votion to  truth  may  seem  as  simple  as  it  is  sacred. 
But  if  we  consider  the  matter  further,  we  shall  soon 
think  differently.  To  begin  then  ;  truth,  as  the  posi- 
tivists  speak  of  it,  is  plainly  a  thing  that  is  to  be  wor- 
shipped in  two  ways  —  firstly  by  its  discovery,  and 
secondly  by  its  publication.  Thus  Professor  Huxley, 
however  much  it  may  pain  him,  will  not  hide  from 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OTI-V  HE  WARD.  153 

himself  the  fact  that  there  is  no  God  ;  and  however 
bad  this  knowledge  may  be  for  humanity,  his  highest 
and  most  sacred  duty  still  consists  in  imparting  it. 
Now  why  should  this  be  ?  I  ask.  Is  it  simply  be- 
cause the  fact  in  question  is  the  truth  ?  That  surely 
cannot  be  so,  as  a  few  other  examples  will  show  us. 
A  man  discovers  that  his  wife  has  been  seduced  by 
his  best  friend.  Is  there  anything  very  high  or  very 
sacred  in  that  discovery  ?  Having  made  it,  does  he 
feel  any  consolation  in  the  knowledge  that  it  is  the 
entire  truth?  And  will  the  ' gladness  of  true  hero- 
ism '  visit  him  if  he  proclaims  it  to  everyone  in  his 
club?  A  chattering  nurse  betrays  his  danger  to  a 
sick  man.  The  sick  man  takes  fright  and  dies.  Was 
the  discovery  of  the  truth  of  his  danger  very  glorious 
for  the  patient  ?  or  was  its  publication  very  sacred  in 
the  nurse  ?  Clearly  the  truths  that  it  is  sacred  to 
find  out  and  to  publish  are  not  all  truths,  but  truths 
of  a  certain  kind  only.  They  are  not  particular 
truths  like  these,  but  the  universal  and  eternal  truths 
that  underlie  them.  They  are  in  fact  what  we  call 
the  truths  of  Nature,  and  the  apprehension  of  them, 
or  truth  as  attained  by  us,  means  the  putting  our- 
selves en  rapport  with  the  life  of  that  infinite  exist- 
ence which  surrounds  and  sustains  all  of  us.  Now 
since  it  is  this  kind  of  truth  only  that  is  supposed  to 
be  so  sacred,  it  is  clear  that  its  sacredness  does  not 
depend  on  itself,  but  on  its  object.  Truth  is  sacred 


154  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

because  Nature  is  sacred  ;  Nature  is  not  sacred  be- 
cause truth  is  ;  and  our  supreme  duty  to  truth  means 
neither  more  nor  less  than  a  supreme  faith  in  Nature. 
It  means  that  there  is  a  something  in  the  Infinite 
outside  ourselves  that  corresponds  to  a  certain  some- 
thing within  ourselves  ;  that  this  latter  something  is 
the  strongest  and  the  highest  part  of  us,  and  that  it 
can  find  no  rest  but  in  communion  with  its  larger 
counterpart.  Truth  sought  for  in  this  way  is  evidently 
a  distinct  thing  from  the  truth  of  utilitarianism.  It 
is  no  false  reflection  of  human  happiness  in  the 
clouds.  For  it  is  to  be  sought  for  none  the  less,  as 
our  positivists  decidedly  tell  us,  even  though  all 
other  happiness  should  be  ruined  by  it.  Now  what 
on  positive  principles  is  the  groundwork  of  this 
teaching  ?  All  ethical  epithets  such  as  sacred,  heroic, 
and  so  forth — all  the  words,  in  fact,  that  are  by 
implication  applied  to  Nature — have  absolutely  no 
meaning  save  as  applied  to  conscious  beings  ;  and 
as  a  subject  for  positive  observation,  there  exists  no 
consciousness  in  the  universe  outside  this  earth.  By 
what  conceivable  means,  then,  can  the  positivists 
transfer  to  Nature  in  general  qualities  which,  so  far 
as  they  know,  are  peculiar  to  human  nature  only  ? 
They  can  only  do  this  in  one  of  two  ways — both  of 
which  they  would  equally  repudiate — either  by  an 
act  of  fancy,  or  by  an  act  of  faith.  Tested  rigidly 
by  their  own  fundamental  common  principles,  it  is 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  1ZEWARD.  155 

as  unmeaning  to  call  the  universe  sacred  as  to  say 
that  the  moon  talks  French. 

Let  us  however  pass  this  by  ;  let  us  refuse  to  sub- 
ject their  teaching  to  the  extreme  rigour  of  even 
their  own  law ;  and  let  us  grant  that  by  some  mixed 
use  of  fancy  or  of  mysticism,  they  can  turn  to  Na- 
ture as  to  some  vast  moral  hieroglyph.  What  sort 
of  morality  do  they  find  in  it  ?  Nature,  as  positive 
observation  reveals  her  to  us,  is  a  thing  that  can 
have  no  claim  either  on  our  reverence  or  our  appro- 
bation. Once  apply  any  moral  test  to  her  conduct, 
and  as  J.  S.  Mill  has  so  forcibly  pointed  out,  she  be- 
comes a  monster.  There  is  no  crime  that  men  abhor 
or  perpetrate  that  Nature  does  not  commit  daily  on 
an  exaggerated  scale.  She  knows  no  sense  either  of 
justice  or  mercy.  Continually  indeed  she  seems  to 
be  tender,  and  loving,  and  bountiful ;  but  all  that, 
at  such  times,  those  that  know  her  can  exclaim  to 
her,  is 

Miseri  quibus 
Intentata  nites. 

At  one  moment  she  will  be  blessing  a  country  with 
plenty,  peace,  and  sunshine ;  and  she  will  the  next 
moment  ruin  the  whole  of  it  by  an  earthquake. 
Now  she  is  the  image  of  thrift,  now  of  prodigality : 
now  of  the  utmost  purity,  now  of  the  most  revolting 
filth  ;  and  if,  as  I  say,  she  is  to  be  judged  by  any 
moral  standard  at  all,  her  capacities  for  what  is  ad- 


156  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

mirable  not  only  make  her  crimes  the  darker,  but 
they  also  make  her  virtues  partake  of  the  nature  of 
sin.  How,  then,  can  an  intimacy  with  this  eternal 
criminal  be  an  ennobling  or  a  sacred  thing?  The 
theist,  of  course,  believes  that  truth  is  sacred.  But 
his  belief  rests  on  a  foundation  that  has  been  alto- 
gether renounced  by  the  positivists.  He  values 
truth  because,  in  whatever  direction  it  takes  him,  it 
takes  him  either  to  God  or  towards  Him — God,  to 
whom  he  is  in  some  sort  akin,  and  after  whose  like- 
ness he  is  in  some  sort  made.  He  sees  Nature  to  be 
cruel,  wicked,  and  bewildering  when  viewed  by  it- 
self. But  behind  Nature  he  sees  a  vaster  power — his 
father — in  whom  mysteriously  all  contradictions  are 
reconciled.  Nature  for  him  is  God' s,  but  it  is  not 
God  ;  and  '  tJiough  God  slay  me,'  he  says,  lyet  will 
I  trust  in  Him.1  This  trust  can  be  attained  to  only 
by  an  act  of  faith  like  this.  No  observation  or  ex- 
periment, or  any  positive  method  of  any  kind,  will 
be  enough  to  give  it  us ;  rather,  without  faith,  obser- 
vation and  experiment  will  do  nothing  but  make  it 
seem  impossible.  Thus  a  belief  in  the  sacredness  of 
Nature,  or,  in  other  words,  in  the  essential  value  of 
truth,  is  as  strictly  an  act  of  religion,  as  strictly  a 
defiance  of  the  whole  positive  formula,  as  any  article 
in  any  ecclesiastical  creed.  It  is  simply  a  concrete 
form  of  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  symbol,  '  / 
believe  in  God  the  Father  Almighty  S  It  rests  on  the 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  157 

same  foundation,  neither  more  nor  less.  Nor  is  it  too 
much  to  say  that  without  a  religion,  without  a  belief 
in  God,  no  fetish-worship  was  ever  more  ridiculous 
than  this  cultus  of  natural  truth. 

This  subject  is  so  important  that  it  will  be  well  to 
dwell  on  it  a  little  longer.  I  will  take  another  pas- 
sage from  Dr.  Tyndall,  which  presents  it  to  us  in  a 
slightly  different  light,  and  which  speaks  explicitly 
not  of  truth  itself,  but  of  that  sacred  Object  beyond, 
of  which  truth  is  only  the  sacramental  channel  to 
us.  '  "  Two  things"  said  Imanuel  Kanf  (it  is  thus 
Dr.  Tyndall  writes),  '  "fill  me  with  awe — tlie  starry 
heavens,  and  the  sense  of  moral  responsibility  in 
man."  And  in  the  hours  of  health  and  strength 
and  sanity,  when  the  stroke  of  action  has  ceased, 
and  when  the  pause  of  re/lection  has  set  in,  the  sci- 
entific investigator  finds  himself  overshadowed  by 
the  same  awe.  Breaking  contact  with  the  hamper- 
ing details  of  earth,  it  associates  him  with  a  power 
which  gives  fulness  and  tone  to  his  existence,  but 
which  he  can  neither  analyse  nor  comprehend.9 
This,  Dr.  Tyndall  tells  us,  is  the  only  rational  state- 
ment of  the  fact  of  that  ' divine  communion,'  whose 
nature  is  '  simply  distorted  and  desecrated1  by  the 
unwarranted  assumptions  of  theism. 

Now  let  us  try  to  consider  accurately  what  Dr. 
Tyndall's  statement  means.  Knowledge  of  Nature, 
he  says,  associates  him  with  Nature.  It  withdraws 


158  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

him  from  'the  hampering  details  of  earthj  and  ena- 
bles the  individual  human  being  to  have  communion 
with  a  something  that  is  beyond  humanity.  But 
what  is  communion  ?  It  is  a  word  with  no  meaning 
at  all  save  as  referring  to  conscious  beings.  There 
could  be  no  communion  between  two  corpses ;  nor, 
again,  between  a  corpse  and  a  living  man.  Dr.  Tyn- 
dall,  for  instance,  could  have  no  communion  with  a 
dead  canary.  Communion  implies  the  existence  on 
both  sides  of  a  common  something.  Now  what  is 
there  in  common  between  Dr.  Tyndall  and  the  starry 
heavens,  or  that  ' power '  of  which  the  starry  heavens 
are  the  embodiment?  Dr.  Tyndall  expressly  says 
that  he  not  only  does  not  know  what  there  is  in 
common,  but  that  he  ' dare'  not  even  say  that,  as 
conscious  beings,  they  two  have  anything  in  common 
at  all.1  The  only  things  he  can  know  about  the 
power  in  question  are  that  it  is  vast,  and  that  it  is 
uniform  ;  but  a  contemplation  of  these  qualities  by 
themselves,  must  tend  rather  to  produce  in  him  a 
sense  of  separation  from  it  than  of  union  with  it. 
United  with  it,  in  one  sense,  he  of  course  is  ;  he  is  a 

1  '  When  I  attempt  to  give  the  power  which  I  see  manifested  in  the  uni- 
verse an  objective  form,  personal  or  otherwise,  it  slips  away  from  me,  de- 
clining all  inteUectual  manipulation.  I  dare  not,  save  poetically,  use 
the  pronoun  "He"  regarding  it.  1  dare  not  call  it  a  "  Mind."  2  re- 
fuse even  to  call  it  a  "  Cause."  Its  mystery  ovcrshadoics  me  ;  but  it  re- 
mains a  mystery,  while  the  objective  frames  which  my  neighbours  try  to 
make  it  fit,  simply  distort  and  desecrate  it.' — Dr.  Tyndall,  'Materialism 
and  its  Opponents,' 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  159 

fraction  of  the  sum  of  things,  and  everything,  in  a 
certain  way,  is  dependent  upon  everything  else. 
But  in  this  union  there  is  nothing  special.  Its  exist- 
ence is  an  obvious  fact,  common  to  all  men,  whether 
they  dwell  upon  it  or  no :  and  though  by  a  knowl- 
edge of  Nature  we  may  grow  to  realise  it  more 
keenly,  it  is  impossible  to  make  the  union  in  the 
least  degree  closer,  or  to  turn  it  into  anything  that 
can  be  in  any  way  called  a  communion.  Indeed,  for 
the  positivists  to  talk  about  communion  or  associa- 
tion with  Nature  is  about  as  rational  as  to  talk  about 
communion  or  association  with  a  steam-engine.  The 
starry  skies  at  night  are  doubtless  an  imposing  spec- 
tacle ;  but  man,  on  positive  principles,  can  be  no 
more  raised  by  watching  them  than  a  commercial 
traveller  can  by  watching  a  duke — probably  far  less : 
for  if  the  duke  were  well  behaved,  the  commercial 
traveller  might  perhaps  learn  some  manners  from 
him  ;  but  there  is  nothing  in  the  panorama  of  the 
universe  that  can  in  any  way  be  any  model  for  the 
positivist.  There  are  but  two  respects  in  which  he 
can  compare  himself  to  the  rest  of  nature — firstly, 
as  a  revealed  force ;  and,  secondly,  as  a  force  that 
works  by  law.  But  the  forces  that  are  revealed  by 
the  stars,  for  instance,  are  vast,  and  the  force  re- 
vealed in  himself  is  small ;  and  he,  as  he  considers, 
is  a  self -determining  agent,  and  the  stars  are  not. 
There  are  but  two  points  of  comparison  between  the 


160  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

two  ;  and  in  these  two  points  they  are  contrasts,  and 
not  likenesses.  It  is  true,  indeed,  as  I  said  just  now, 
that  a  sense  of  awe  and  of  hushed  solemnity  is,  as  a 
fact,  born  in  us  at  the  spectacle  of  the  starry  heavens 
—world  upon  luminous  world  shining  and  quivering 
silently ;  it  is  true,  too,  that  a  spontaneous  feeling 
connects  such  a  sense  somehow  with  our  deepest 
moral  being.  But  this,  on  positive  principles,  must 
be  feeling  only.  It  means  absolutely  nothing :  it 
can  have  no  objective  fact  that  corresponds  to  it.  It 
is  an  illusion,  a  pathetic  fallacy.  And  to  say  that 
the  heavens  with  their  stars  declare  to  us  anything 
high  or  holy,  is  no  more  rational  than  to  say  that 
Brighton  does,  which  itself,  seen  at  night  from  the 
sea,  is  a  long  braid  of  stars  descended  upon  the  wide 
horizon.  All  that  the  study  of  nature,  all  that  the 
love  of  truth,  can  do  for  the  positivist  is  not  to  guide 
him  to  any  communion  with  a  vaster  power,  but  to 
show  him  that  no  such  communion  is  possible.  His 
devotion  to  truth,  if  it  mean  anything — and  the  lan- 
guage he  often  uses  about  it  betrays  this — let  us 
know  the  worst,  not  let  us  find  out  the  best : — a  wish 
which  is  neither  more  nor  less  noble  than  the  wish 
to  sit  down  at  once  in  a  slop  upon  the  floor  rather 
than  sustain  oneself  any  longer  above  it  on  a  chair 
that  is  discovered  to  be  rickety. 

Here  then  again,  in  this  last  resource  of  positivism 
we  have  religion  embodied  as  a  yet  more  important 


LIFE  AS  ITS  OWN  REWARD.  161 

element  than  in  any  of  the  others ;  and  when  this 
element  is  driven  out  of  it,  it  collapses  yet  more 
hopelessly  than  they  do.  By  the  whole  positive 
system  we  are  bound  to  human  life.  There  is  no 
mystical  machinery  by  which  we  can  rise  above  it. 
It  is  by  its  own  isolated  worth  that  this  life  must 
stand  or  fall. 

And  what,  let  us  again  ask,  will  this  worth 
be  ?  The  question  is  of  course,  as  I  have  said, 
too  vague  to  admit  of  more  than  a  general  answer, 
but  a  general  answer,  as  I  have  said  also,  may  be 
given  confidently  enough.  Man  when  fully  im- 
bued with  the  positive  view  of  himself,  will  inev- 
itably be  an  animal  of  far  fewer  capacities  than 
he  at  present  is.  He  will  not  be  able  to  suffer  so 
much  ;  but  also  he  will  not  be  able  to  enjoy  so 
much.  Surround  him,  in  imagination,  with  the 
most  favourable  circumstances ;  let  social  progress 
have  been  carried  to  the  utmost  perfection ;  and  let 
him  have  access  to  every  happiness  of  which  we  can 
conceive  him  capable.  It  is  impossible  even  thus  to 
conceive  of  life  as  a  very  valuable  possession  to  him. 
It  would  at  any  rate  be  far  less  valuable  than  it  is 
to  many  men  now,  under  outer  circumstances  that 
are  far  less  favourable.  The  goal  to  which  a  purely 
human  progress  is  capable  of  conducting  us,  is  thus 
no  vague  condition  of  glory  and  felicity,  in  which 

men  shall  develop  new  and  ampler  powers.     It  is  a 
11 


102  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

condition  in  which  the  keenest  life  attainable  has 
continually  been  far  surpassed  already,  without  any- 
thing having  been  arrived  at  that  in  itself  seemed  of 
surpassing  value. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE   SUPERSTITION   OF   POSITIVISM. 

GLENDOWEK.  I  can  call  spirits  from  the  vasty  deep. 
HOTSPUR.   Why  so  can  I,  or  so  can  any  man, 

But  will  they  come  when  you  do  call  for  them? 

Henry  IV.     Part  1. 

GENERAL  and  indefinite  as  the  foregoing  considera- 
tions have  been,  they  are  quite  definite  enough  to  be 
of  the  utmost  practical  import.  They  are  definite 
enough  to  show  the  utter  hollo wness  of  that  vague 
faith  in  progress,  and  the  glorious  prospects  that  lie 
before  humanity,  on  which  the  positive  school  at 
present  so  much  rely,  and  about  which  so  much  is 
said.  To  a  certain  extent,  indeed,  a  faith  in  pro- 
gress is  perfectly  rational  and  well  grounded.  There 
are  many  imperfections  in  life,  which  the  course  of 
events  tends  manifestly  to  lessen  if  not  to  do  away 
with,  and  so  far  as  these  are  concerned,  improve- 
ments may  go  on  indefinitely.  But  the  things  that 
this  progress  touches  are,  as  has  been  said  before, 
not  happiness,  but  the  negative  conditions  of  it.  A 
belief  in  this  kind  of  progress  is  not  peculiar  to 
positivism.  It  is  common  to  all  educated  men,  no 
matter  what  their  creed  may  be.  What  is  peculiar 

163 


164  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

to  positivism  is  the  strange  corollary  to  this  belief, 
that  man's  subjective  powers  of  happiness  will  go  on 
expanding  likewise.  It  is  the  belief  not  only  that 
the  existing  pleasures  will  become  more  diffused,  but 
that  they  will,  as  George  Eliot  says,  become  '•more 
intense  in  diffusion^  It  is  this  belief  on  which  the 
positivists  rely  to  create  that  enthusiasm,  that  im- 
passioned benevolence,  which  is  to  be  the  motive 
power  of  their  whole  ethical  machinery.  They  have 
taken  away  the  Christian  heaven,  and  have  thus 
turned  adrift  a  number  of  hopes  and  aspirations 
that  were  once  powerful.  These  hopes  and  aspira- 
tions they  acknowledge  to  be  of  the  first  necessity ; 
they  are  facts,  they  say,  of  human  nature,  and  no 
higher  progress  would  be  possible  without  them. 
What  the  enlightened  thought  is  to  do  is  not  to  ex- 
tinguish, but  to  transfer  them.  They  are  to  be  given 
a  new  object  more  satisfactory  than  the  old  one  ;  not 
our  own  private  glory  in  another  world,  but  the 
common  glory  of  our  whole  race  in  this. 

Now  let  us  consider  for  a  moment  some  of  the 
positive  criticisms  on  the  Christian  heaven,  and 
then  apply  them  to  the  proposed  substitute.  The 
belief  in  heaven,  say  the  positivists,  is  to  be  set  aside 
for  two  great  reasons.  In  the  first  place  there  is  no 
objective  proof  of  its  existence,  and  in  the  second 
place  there  is  subjective  proof  of  its  impossibility. 
Not  only  is  it  not  deducible,  but  it  is  not  even 


TUB  SUPERSTITION  OF  POSITIVISM.  165 

thinkable.  Give  the  imagination  carte  Blanche  to 
construct  it,  and  the  imagination  will  either  do  noth- 
ing, or  will  do  something  ridiculous.  '  My  position 
[trilh  regard  to  this  matter} '  says  a  popular  living 
writer,1  '•is  this — The  idea  of  a  glorified  energy  in 
an  ampler  life,  is  an  idea  utterly  incompatible  with 
exact  thought,  one  ichich  evaporates  in  contradic- 
tions, in  phrases,  which  when  pressed  have  no  mean- 
ing.' 

Now  if  this  criticism  has  the  least  force,  as  used 
against  the  Christian  heaven,  it  has  certainly  far 
more  as  used  against  the  future  glories  of  humanity. 
The  positivists  ask  the  Christians  how  they  expect 
to  enjoy  themselves  in  heaven.  The  Christians  may, 
with  far  more  force,  ask  the  positivists  how  they  ex- 
pect to  enjoy  themselves  on  earth.  For  the  Christians' 
heaven  being  ex  hypothesi  an  unknown  world,  they 
do  not  stultify  their  expectations  from  being  unable 
to  describe  them.  On  the  contrary  it  is  a  part  of 
their  faith  that  they  are  indescribable.  But  the 
positivists'  heaven  is  altogether  in  this  world ;  and 
no  mystical  faith  has  any  place  in  their  system.  In 
this  case,  therefore,  whatever  we  may  think  of  the 
other,  it  is  plain  that  the  tests  in  question  are  alto- 
gether complete  and  final.  To  the  Christians,  in- 
deed, it  is  quite  open  to  make  their  supposed  shame 
their  glory,  and  to  say  that  their  heaven  would  be 

1  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison. 


166  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

nothing  if  describable.  The  positivists  have  bound 
themselves  to  admit  that  theirs  is  nothing  unless 
describable. 

What  then,  let  us  ask  the  enthusiasts  of  human- 
ity, will  humanity  be  like  in  its  ideally  perfect  state  ? 
Let  them  show  us  some  sample  of  the  general  future 
perfection ;  let  them  describe  one  of  the  nobler, 
ampler,  glorified  human  beings  of  the  future.  What 
will  he  be  like  ?  What  will  he  long  for  ?  What  will 
he  take  pleasure  in  ?  How  will  he  spend  his  days  ? 
How  will  he  make  love  ?  "What  will  he  laugh  at  ? 
And  let  him  be  described  in  phrases  which  when 
pressed  do  not  evaporate  in  contradictions,  but 
which  have  some  distinct  meaning,  and  are  not  in- 
compatible with  exact  thought.  Do  our  exact  think- 
ers in  the  least  know  what  they  are  prophesying  ? 
If  not,  what  is  the  meaning  of  their  prophecy  ?  The 
prophecies  of  the  positive  school  are  rigid  scientific 
inferences  ;  they  are  that  or  nothing.  And  one  can- 
not infer  an  event  of  whose  nature  one  is  wholly 
ignorant. 

Let  these  obvious  questions  be  put  to  our  positive 
moralists — these  questions  they  have  themselves  sug- 
gested, and  the  grotesque  unreality  of  this  vague 
optimism  will  be  at  once  apparent.  Never  was  va- 
gary of  mediaeval  faith  so  groundless  as  this.  The 
Earthly  Paradise  that  the  mediaeval  world  believed 
in  was  not  more  mythical  than  the  Earthly  Paradise 


THE  SUPERSTITION  OF  POSITIVISM.  167 

believed  in  by  our  exact  thinkers  now  ;  and  George 
Eliot  might  just  as  well  start  in  a  Cunard  steamer  to 
find  the  one,  as  send  her  faith  into  the  future  to  find 
the  other. 

Could  it  be  shown  that  these  splendid  anticipations 
were  well  founded,  they  might  perhaps  kindle  some 
new  and  active  enthusiasm  ;  though  it  is  very  doubt- 
ful, even  then,  if  the  desire  would  be  ardent  enough 
to  bring  about  its  own  accomplishment.  This,  how- 
ever, it  is  quite  useless  to  consider,  the  anticipations 
in  question  being  simply  an  empty  dream.  A  cer- 
tain kind  of  improvement,  as  I  have  said,  we  are  no 
doubt  right  in  looking  for,  not  only  with  confidence, 
but  with  complacency.  But  positivism,  so  far  from 
brightening  this  prospect,  makes  it  indefinitely  dul- 
ler than  it  would  be  otherwise.  The  practical  re- 
sults therefore  to  be  looked  for  from  a  faith  in  prog- 
ress may  be  seen  at  their  utmost  already  in  the 
world  around  us  ;  and  the  positivists  may  make  the 
sobering  reflection  that  their  system  can  only  change 
these  from  what  they  already  see  them,  not  by 
strengthening,  but  by  weakening  them.  Take  the 
world  then  as  it  is  at  present,  and  the  sense,  on  the 
individual's  part,  that  he  personally  is  promoting  its 
progress,  can  belong  to,  and  can  stimulate,  excep- 
tional men  only,  who  are  doing  some  public  work ; 
and  it  will  be  found  even  in  these  cases  that  the 
pleasure  which  this  sense  gives  them  is  largely  forti- 


168  IB  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

fied  (as  is  said  of  wine)  by  the  entirely  alien  sense  of 
fame  and  power.  On  the  generality  of  men  it  neither 
has,  nor  can  have,  any  effect  whatever,  or  even  if  it 
gives  a  glow  to  their  inclinations  in  some  cases,  it 
will  at  any  rate  never  curb  them  in  any.  The  fact 
indeed  that  things  in  general  do  tend  to  get  better 
in  certain  ways,  must  produce  in  most  men  not  effort 
but  acquiescence.  It  may,  when  the  imagination 
brings  it  home  to  them,  shed  a  pleasing  light  occa- 
sionally over  the  surface  of  their  private  lives :  but 
it  would  be  as  irrational  to  count  on  this  as  a  stimu- 
lus to  farther  action,  as  to  expect  that  the  summer 
sunshine  would  work  a  steam-engine. 

If  we  consider,  then,  that  even  the  present  condi- 
tion of  things  is  far  more  calculated  to  produce  the 
enthusiasm  of  humanity  than  the  condition  that  the 
positivists  are  preparing  for  themselves,  we  shall  see 
how  utterly  chimerical  is  their  entire  practical  system. 
It  is  like  a  drawing  of  a  cathedral,  which  looks 
magnificent  at  the  first  glance,  but  which  a  second 
glance  shows  to  be  composed  of  structural  impossi- 
bilities— blocks  of  masonry  resting  on  no  founda- 
tions, columns  hanging  from  the  roofs,  instead  of  sup- 
porting them,  and  doors  and  windows  with  inverted 
arches.  The  positive  system  could  only  work  prac- 
tically were  human  nature  to  suffer  a  complete  change 
— a  change  which  it  has  no  spontaneous  tendency  to 
make,  which  no  known  power  could  ever  tend  to 


THE  SUPERSTITION  OF  POSITIVISM.  169 

force  on  it,  and  which,  in  short,  there  is  no  ground 
of  any  kind  for  expecting. 

There  are  two  characteristics  in  men,  for  instance, 
which,  though  they  undoubtedly  do  exist,  the  posi- 
tive system  requires  to  be  indefinitely  magnified — the 
imagination,  and  unselfishness.  The  work  of  the 
imagination  is  to  present  to  the  individual  conscious- 
ness the  remote  ends  to  which  all  progress  is  to  be 
directed  ;  and  the  desire  to  work  for  these  is,  on  the 
positive  supposition,  to  conquer  all  mere  personal 
impulses.  Now  men  have  already  had  an  end  set  be- 
fore them,  in  the  shape  of  the  joys  of  heaven,  which 
was  far  brighter  and  far  more  real  to  them  than  these 
others  can  ever  be  ;  and  yet  the  imagination  has  so 
failed  to  keep  this  before  them,  that  its  small  effect 
upon  their  lives  is  a  commonplace  with  the  positivists 
themselves.  How  then  can  these  latter  hope  that 
their  own  pale  and  distant  ideal  will  have  a  more 
vivid  effect  on  the  world  than  that  near  and  glowing 
one,  in  whose  place  they  put  it  ?  Will  it  incite  men 
to  virtues  to  which  heaven  could  not  incite  them  ?  or 
lure  them  away  from  vices  from  which  hell-fire  would 
not  scare  them  ?  Before  it  can  do  so,  it  is  plain  that 
human  nature  must  have  completely  changed,  and 
its  elements  have  been  re-mixed,  in  completely  new 
proportions.  In  a  state  of  things  where  such  a  result 
was  possible,  a  man  would  do  a  better  day's  work 
for  a  penny  to  be  given  to  his  unborn  grandson,  than 


170  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING* 

he  would  now  do  for  a  pound  to  be  paid  to  himself 
at  sunset. 

For  argument' s  sake,  however,  let  us  suppose  such 
a  change  possible.  Let  us  suppose  the  imagination 
to  be  so  developed  that  the  remote  end  of  progress — 
that  happier  state  of  men  in  some  far  off  century- 
is  ever  vividly  present  to  us  as  a  possibility  we  may 
help  to  realise.  Another  question  still  remains  for 
us.  To  preserve  this  happiness  for  others,  we  are 
told,  we  must  to  a  large  extent  sacrifice  our  own.  Is 
it  in  human  nature  to  make  this  sacrifice  ?  The  posi- 
tive moralists  assure  us  that  it  is,  and  for  this  reason. 
Man,  they  say,  is  an  animal  who  enjoys  vicariously 
with  almost  as  much  zest  as  in  his  own  person  ;  and 
therefore  to  procure  a  greater  pleasure  for  others 
makes  him  far  happier  than  to  procure  a  less  one  for 
himself.  In  this  statement,  as  I  have  observed  in  an 
earlier  chapter,  there  is  no  doubt  a  certain  general 
truth  ;  but  how  far  it  will  hold  good  in  particular 
instances  depends  altogether  on  particular  circum- 
stances. It  depends  on  the  temperament  of  the  per- 
son who  is  to  make  the  sacrifice,  on  the  nature  of  his 
feelings  towards  the  person  for  whom  he  is  to  make 
it,  and  on  the  proportion  between  the  pleasure  he  is 
to  forego  himself,  and  the  pleasure  he  is  to  secure 
for  another.  Now  if  we  consider  human  nature  as 
it  is,  and  the  utmost  development  of  it  that  on  posi- 
tive grounds  is  possible,  the  conditions  that  can  pro- 


THE  SUPERSTITION  OF  POSITIVISM.  171 

duce  the  requisite  self-sacrifice  will  be  found  to  be 
altogether  wanting.  The  future  we  are  to  labour  for, 
even  when  viewed  in  its  brightest  light,  will  only  excel 
the  present  in  having  fewer  miseries.  So  far  as  its 
happiness  goes  it  will  be  distinctly  less  intense.  It 
will,  as  we  have  seen  already,  be  but  a  vapid  consum- 
mation at  its  best ;  and  the  more  vividly  it  is  brought 
before  us  in  imagination,  the  less  likely  shall  we  be 
to  '  struggle,  groan,  and  agonize?  for  the  sake  of 
hastening  it  in  reality.  It  will  do  nothing,  at  any 
rate,  to  increase  the  tendency  to  self-sacrifice  that  is 
now  at  work  in  the  world ;  and  this,  though  startling 
us  now  and  then  by  some  spasmodic  manifestation, 
is  not  strong  enough  to  have  much  general  effect  on 
the  present ;  still  less  will  it  have  more  effect  on  the 
future.  Vicarious  happiness  as  a  rule  is  only  pos- 
sible when  the  object  gained  for  another  is  enor- 
mously greater  than  the  object  lost  by  self ;  and  it 
is  not  always  possible  even  then :  whilst  when  the 
gains  on  either  side  are  nearly  equal,  it  ceases  alto- 
gether. And  necessarily  so.  If  it  did  not,  every- 
thing would  be  at  a  dead-lock.  Life  would  be  a  per- 
petual holding  back,  instead  of  a  pushing  forward. 
Everyone  would  be  waiting  at  the  door,  and  saying 
to  everyone  else,  'After  you?  But  all  these  practi- 
cal considerations  are  entirely  forgotten  by  the  posi- 
tivists.  They  live  in  a  world  of  their  own  imagining, 
in  which  all  the  rules  of  this  world  are  turned  upside 


172  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

down.  There,  the  defeated  candidate  in  an  election 
would  be  radiant  at  his  rival's  victory.  When  a  will 
was  read,  the  anxiety  of  each  relative  would  be  that 
he  or  she  should  be  excluded  in  favour  of  the  oth- 
ers ;  or  more  probably  still  that  they  should  be  all 
excluded  in  favour  of  a  hospital.  Two  rivals,  in  love 
with  the  same  woman,  would  be  each  anxious  that 
his  own  suit  might  be  thwarted.  And  a  man  would 
gladly  involve  himself  in  any  ludicrous  misfortune, 
because  he  knew  that  the  sight  of  his  catastrophe 
would  rejoice  his  whole  circle  of  friends.  The  course 
of  human  progress,  in  fact,  would  be  one  gigantic 
donkey-race,  in  which  those  were  the  winners  who 
were  farthest  off  from  the  prize. 

We  have  but  to  state  the  matter  in  terms  of  com- 
mon life,  to  see  how  impossible  is  the  only  condition 
of  things  that  would  make  the  positive  system  prac- 
ticable. The  first  wonder  that  suggests  itself,  is  how 
so  grotesque  a  conception  could  ever  have  origi- 
nated. But  its  genesis  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  posi- 
tivists  do  not  postulate  any  new  elements  in  human 
nature,  but  the  reduction  of  some,  elimination  of 
others,  and  the  magnifying  of  others.  And  they 
actually  find  "cases  where  this  process  has  been 
effected.  But  they  quite  forget  the  circumstances 
that  have  made  such  an  event  possible.  They  forget 
that  in  their  very  nature  they  have  been  altogether 
exceptional  and  transitory  ;  and  that  it  is  impossible 


THE  SUPERSTITION  OF  POSITIVISM.  173 

to  construct  a  Utopia  in  which  they  shall  exist 
at  all.  We  can,  for  instance,  no  doubt  point  to 
Leonidas  and  the  three  hundred  as  specimens  of 
what  human  heroism  can  rise  to ;  and  we  can  point 
to  the  Stoics  as  specimens  of  human  self-control. 
But  to  make  a  new  Thermopylae  we  want  a  new  Bar- 
barian ;  and  before  we  can  recoil  from  temptation  as 
the  Stoics  did,  we  must  make  pleasure  as  perilous 
and  as  terrible  as  it  was  under  the  Roman  emperors. 
Such  developments  of  humanity  are  at  their  very 
essence  abnormal ;  and  to  suppose  that  they  could 
ever  become  the  common  type  of  character,  would 
be  as  absurd  as  to  suppose  that  all  mankind  could 
be  kings.  I  will  take  another  instance  that  is  more 
to  the  point  yet.  A  favourite  positivist  parable  is 
that  of  the  miser.  The  miser  in  the  first  place  de- 
sires gold  because  it  can  buy  pleasure.  Next  he 
comes  to  desire  it  more  than  the  pleasure  it  can  buy. 
In  the  same  way,  it  is  said,  men  can  be  taught  to  de- 
sire virtue  by  investing  it  with  the  attractions  of  the 
end,  to  which,  strictly  speaking  it  is  no  more  than 
the  means.  But  this  parable  really  disproves  the 
very  possibility  it  is  designed  to  illustrate.  It  is  de- 
signed to  illustrate  the  possibility  of  our  choosing 
actions  that  will  give  pleasure  to  others,  in  con- 
tradistinction to  actions  that  will  give  pleasure  to 
ourselves.  But  the  miser  desires  gold  for  an  exactly 
opposite  reason.  He  desires  it  as  potential  selfish- 


174  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

ness,  not  as  potential  philanthropy.  Secondly,  we  are 
to  choose  the  actions  in  question  because  they  will 
make  us  happy.  But  the  very  name  we  give  the  miser 
shows  that  the  analogous  choice  in  his  case  makes 
him  miserable.  Thirdly,  the  material  miser  is  an  ex- 
ceptional character;  there  is  no  known  means  by 
which  it  can  be  made  more  common  ;  and  with  the 
moral  miser  the  case  will  be  just  the  same.  Lastly,  if 
such  a  character  be  barely  producible  even  in  the  pres- 
ent state  of  the  world,  much  less  will  it  be  producible 
when  human  capacities  shall  have  been  curtailed  by 
positivism,  when  the  pleasures  that  the  gold  of  virtue 
represents  are  less  intense  than  at  present,  and  the 
value  of  the  coveted  coin  is  indefinitely  depreciated. 
Much  more  might  be  added  to  the  same  purpose, 
but  enough  has  been  said  already  to  make  these  two 
points  clear  : — firstly,  that  the  positive  system,  if  it 
is  to  do  any  practical  work  in  the  world,  requires 
that  the  whole  human  character  shall  be  profoundly 
altered ;  and  secondly,  that  the  required  alteration 
is  one  that  may  indeed  be  dreamt  about,  but  which 
can  never  possibly  be  made.  Even  were  it  made, 
the  results  would  not  be  splendid ;  but  no  matter 
how  splendid  they  might  be,  this  is  of  no  possible 
moment  to  us.  There  are  few  things  on  which  it  is 
idler  to  speculate  than  the  issues  of  impossible  con- 
tingencies. And  the  positivists  would  be  talking 
just  as  much  to  the  purpose  as  they  do  now,  were 


THE  SUPERSTITION  OF  POSITIVISM.  175 

they  to  tell  us  how  fast  we  should  travel  supposing 
we  had  wings,  or  what  deep  water  we  could  wade 
through  if  we  were  twenty-four  feet  high.  These 
last,  indeed,  are  just  the  suppositions  that  they 
do  make.  Between  our  human  nature  and  the 
nature  they  desiderate  there  is  a  deep  and  fordless 
river,  over  which  they  can  throw  no  bridge,  and  all 
their  talk  supposes  that  we  shall  be  able  to  fly  or 
wade  across  it,  or  else  that  it  will  dry  up  of  itself. 

Rusticus  expectat  dum  defluat  amnis,  at  tile 
Labitur  et  labetur,  in  omne  volubilis  cBvum. 

So  utterly  grotesque  and  chimerical  is  this  whole  pos- 
itive theory  of  progress,  that,  as  an  outcome  of  the 
present  age,  it  seems  little  short  of  a  miracle.  Profes- 
sing to  embody  what  that  age  considers  its  special 
characteristics,  what  it  really  embodies  is  the  most 
emphatic  negation  .of  these.  It  professes  to  rest  on 
experience,  and  yet  no  Christian  legend  ever  contra- 
dicted experience  more.  It  professes  to  be  sustained 
by  proof,  and  yet  the  professions  of  no  conjuring 
quack  ever  appealed  more  exclusively  to  credulity. 

Its  appearance,  however,  will  cease  to  be  wonder- 
ful, and  its  real  significance  will  become  more  appa- 
rent, if  we  consider  the  class  of  thinkers  who  have 
elaborated  and  popularised  it.  They  have  been  men 
and  women,  for  the  most  part,  who  have  had  the 
following  characteristics  in  common.  Their  early 


176  -ES  LIFE  WOMTH  LIVING  f 

training  has  been  religious  ; l  their  temperaments 
have  been  naturally  grave  and  earnest ;  they  have 
had  few  strong  passions ;  they  have  been  brought 
up  knowing  little  of  what  is  commonly  called  the 
world  ;  their  intellects  have  been  vigorous  and  ac- 
tive ;  and  finally  they  have  rejected  in  maturity  the 
religion  by  which  all  their  thoughts  have  been 
coloured.  The  result  has  been  this.  The  death  of 
their  religion  has  left  a  quantity  of  moral  emotions 
without  an  object ;  and  this  disorder  of  the  moral  emo- 
tions has  left  their  mental  energies  without  a  leader. 
A  new  object  instantly  becomes  a  necessity.  They 
are  ethical  Don  Quixotes  in  want  of  a  Dulcinea  ;  the 
best  they  can  find  is  happiness  and  the  progress  of 
Humanity  ;  and  to  this  their  imagination  soon  gives 
the  requisite  glow.  Their  strong  intellects,  their  ac- 
tivity, and  their  literary  culture  each  supplements  the 
power  that  it  undoubtedly  does  give,  with  a  sense 
of  knowing  the  world  that  is  altogether  fictitious. 
They  imagine  that  their  own  narrow  lives,  their  own 
feeble  temptations,  and  their  own  exceptional  ambi- 

1  The  case  of  J.  S.  Mill  may  seem  at  first  sight  to  be  an  exception  to 
this.  But  it  is  really  not  so.  Though  he  was  brought  up  without 
any  religious  teaching,  yet  the  severe  and  earnest  influences  of  his 
childhood  would  have  been  impossible  except  in  a  religious  country. 
He  was  in  fact  brought  up  in  an  atmosphere  (if  I  may  borrow  with  a 
slight  change  a  phrase  of  Professor  Huxley's)  of  Puritanism  minus 
Christianity.  It  may  be  remembered  farther  that  Mill  says  of  him- 
self, '  1  am  one  of  the  very  few  examples  of  one  who  has  not  thrown  ojff 
vetigiou*  belief,  but  never  had  it. ' 


THE  SUPERSTITION  OF  POSITIVISM. 

tions  represent  the  universal  elements  of  human  life 
and  character  ;  and  they  thus  expect  that  an  object 
which  has  really  been  but  the  creature  of  an  impulse 
in  themselves,  will  be  the  creator  of  a  like  impulse 
in  others  ;  and  that  in  the  case  of  others,  it  will  rev- 
olutionise the  whole  natural  character,  whereas  it 
has  only  been  a  symbol  of  it  in  their  own. 

Most  of  our  positive  moralists,  at  least  in  this  conn, 
try,  have  been  and  are  people  of  such  excellent  char- 
acter, and  such  earnest  and  high  purpose,  that  there 
is  something  painful  in  having  to  taunt  them  with  an 
ignorance  which  is  not  their  own  fault,  and  which 
must  make  their  whole  position  ridiculous.  The 
charge,  however,  is  one  that  it  is  quite  necessary  to 
make,  as  we  shall  never  properly  estimate  their  sys- 
tem if  we  pass  it  over.  It  will  be  said,  probably,  that 
the  simplicity  as  to  worldly  matters  I  attribute  to 
them,  so  far  from  telling  against  them,  is  really  essen- 
tial to  their  character  as  moral  teachers.  And  to 
moral  teachers  of  a  certain  kind  it  may  be  essential. 
But  it  is  not  so  to  them.  The  religious  moralist 
might  well  instruct  the  world,  though  he  knew  little 
of  its  ways  and  passions  ;  for  the  aim  of  his  teaching 
was  to  withdraw  men  from  the  world.  But  the  aim 
of  the  positive  moralist  is  precisely  opposite ;  it  is  to 
keep  men  in  the  world.  It  is  not  to  teach  men  to 
despise  this  life,  but  to  adore  it.  The  positions  of 
the  two  moralists  are  in  fact  the  exact  converses  of 
12 


178  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

each  other.  For  the  divine,  earth  is  an  illusion, 
heaven  a  reality ;  for  the  positivist,  earth  is  a  reality, 
and  heaven  an  illusion.  The  former  in  his  retire- 
ment studied  intensely  the  world  that  he  thought 
real,  and  he  could  do  this  the  better  for  being  not 
distracted  by  the  other.  The  positivists  imitate  the 
divine  in  neglecting  what  they  think  is  an  illusion ; 
l?ut  they  do  not  attempt  to  imitate  him  in  studying 
what  they  think  is  the  reality.  The  consequence  is, 
as  I  have  just  been  pointing  out,  that  the  world  they 
live  in  and  to  which  alone  their  system  could  be  ap- 
plicable, is  a  world  of  their  own  creation,  and  its 
bloodless  populations  are  all  of  them  idola  specus. 

If  we  will  but  think  all  this  calmly  over,  and  try 
really  to  sympathise  with  the  position  of  these  poor 
enthusiasts,  we  shall  soon  see  their  system  in  its  true 
light,  and  shall  learn  at  once  to  realise  and  to  excuse 
its  fatuity.  We  shall  see  that  it  either  has  no  mean- 
ing whatever,  or  that  its  meaning  is  one  that  its 
authors  have  already  repudiated,  and  only  do  not 
recognise  now,  because  they  have  so  inadequately 
re-expressed  it.  We  shall  see  that  their  system  has 
no  motive  power  at  all  in  it,  or  that  its  motive  power 
is  simply  the  theistic  faith  they  rejected,  now  tied  up 
in  a  sack  and  left  to  flounder  instead  of  walking  up- 
right. We  shall  see  that  their  system  is  either  noth- 
ing, or  that  it  is  a  mutilated  reproduction  of  the  very 
thing  it  professes  to  be  superseding.  Once  set  it 


THE  SUPERSTITION  OF  POSITIVISM.  179 

upon  its  own  professed  foundations,  and  the  entire 
quasi-religious  structure,  with  its  visionary  hopes,  its 
impossible  enthusiasms — all  its  elaborate  apparatus 
for  enlarging  the  single  life,  and  the  generation  that 
surrounds  it,  falls  to  earth  instantly  like  a  castle  of 
cards.  We  are  left  simply  each  of  us  with  our  own 
lives,  and  with  the  life  about  us,  amplified  indeed  to 
a  certain  extent  by  sympathy,  but  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent only — an  extent  whose  limits  we  are  quite 
familiar  with  from  experience,  and  which  positivism, 
if  it  tends  to  move  them  at  all,  can  only  narrow,  and 
can  by  no  possibility  extend.  We  are  left  with  this 
life,  changed  only  in  one  way.  It  will  have  nothing 
added  to  it,  but  it  will  have  much  taken  from  it. 
Everything  will  have  gone  that  is  at  present  keenest 
in  it — joys  and  miseries  as  well.  In  this  way  posi- 
tivism is  indeed  an  engine  of  change,  and  may  in- 
augurate if  not  complete  a  most  momentous  kind  of 
progress.  That  progress  is  the  gradual  de-religionis- 
ing  of  life,  the  slow  sublimating  out  of  it  of  its  con- 
crete theism— the  slow  destruction  of  its  whole  moral 
civilisation.  And  as  this  progress  continues  there 
will  not  only  fade  out  of  the  human  consciousness 
the  things  I  have  before  dwelt  on — all  capacity  for  the 
keener  pains  and  pleasures,  but  there  will  fade  out 
of  it  also  that  strange  sense  which  is  the  union  of  all 
these — the  white  light  woven  of  all  these  rays ;  that 
is,  the  vague  but  deep  sense  of  some  special  dignity 


180  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

in  ourselves — a  sense  which  we  feel  to  be  onr  birth- 
right, inalienable  except  by  our  own  act  and  deed  ; 
a  sense  which,  at  present,  in  success  sobers  us,  and 
in  failure  sustains  us,  and  which  is  visible  more  or 
less  distinctly  in  our  manners,  in  our  bearing,  and 
even  in  the  very  expression  of  the  human  counte- 
nance: it  is,  in  other  words,  the  sense  that  life  is 
worth  living,  not  accidentally  but  essentially.  And 
as  this  sense  goes  its  place  will  be  taken  by  one  pre- 
cisely opposite — the  sense  that  life,  in  so  far  as  it  is 
worth  living  at  all,  is  worth  living  not  essentially,  but 
accidentally ;  that  it  depends  entirely  upon  what  of 
its  pleasures  we  can  each  one  of  us  realise ;  that  it 
will  vary  as  a  positive  quantity,  like  wealth,  and  that 
it  may  become  also  a  various  quantity,  like  poverty  ; 
and  that  behind  and  beyond  these  vicissitudes  it  can 
have  no  abiding  value. 

To  realise  fully  a  state  of  things  like  this  is  for 
us  not  possible.  But  we  can,  however,  understand 
something  of  its  nature.  I  conceive  those  to  be 
altogether  wrong  who  say  that  such  a  state  would  be 
one  of  any  wild  license,  or  anything  that  we  should 
call  very  revolting  depravity.  Offences,  certainly, 
that  we  consider  the  most  abominable  would  doubt- 
less be  committed  continually  and  as  matters  of 
course.  Such  a  feeling  as  shame  about  them  would 
be  altogether  unknown.  But  the  normal  forms  of 
passion  would  remain,  I  conceive,  the  most  impor- 


THE  SUPERSTITION  OF  POSITIVISM.  181 

tant ;  and  it  is  probable,  that  though  no  form  of  vice 
would  have  the  least  anathema  attached  to  it,  the 
rage  for  the  sexual  pleasures  would  be  far  less  fierce 
than  it  is  in  many  cases  now.  The  sort  of  condition 
to  which  the  world  would  be  tending  would  be  a  con- 
dition rather  of  dulness  than  what  we,  in  our  par- 
lance, should  now  call  degradation.  Indeed  the  state 
of  things  to  which  the  positive  view  of  life  seems  to 
promise  us,  and  which  to  some  extent  it  is  actually 
now  bringing  on  us,  is  exactly  what  was  predicted 
long  ago,  with  an  accuracy  that  seems  little  less  than 
inspired,  at  the  end  of  Pope's  Dunciad. 

In  vain,  in  vain :  the  all-composing  hour 
Resistless  falls  !  t7ie  muse  obeys  the  power. 
She  comes  !  she  comes  !  the  sable  throne  behold 
Of  night  primaeval  and  of  chaos  old. 
Before  her,  fancy's  gilded  clouds  decay, 
And  all  its  varying  rainbows  die  away. 
Wit  shoots  in  vain  its  momentary  fires, 
The  meteor  drops,  and  in  a  flash  expires. 
As  one  by  one,  at  dread  Medea's  strain, 
The  sickening  stars  fade  off  the  ethereal  plain  ; 
As  Argus'  eyes,  by  Hermes'  wand  oppress'd 
Clos'd  one  by  one  to  everlasting  rest; 
Thus,  at  her  felt  approach  and  secret  might, 
Art  after  art  goes  out,  and  all  is  night. 
See  skulking  truth  to  her  old  cavern  fled, 
Mountains  of  casuistry  heap'd  o'er  her  head. 
Philosophy,  that  lean'd  on  heaven  before, 
Shrinks  to  her  second  cause,  and  is  no  more. 


182  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

Physic  of  metaphysic  begs  defence, 

And  metaphysic  calls  for  aid  on  sense! 

See  mystery  to  mathematics  fly. 

In  vain :  they  gaze,  turn  giddy,  rave,  and  die. 

Religion,  blushing,  veils  her  sacred  fires  ; 

And,  unawares,  morality  expires. 

Nor  public  flame,  nor  private,  dare*  to  shine, 

Nor  human  spark  is  left,  nor  glimpse  divine. 

Lo  !  thy  dread  empire,  Chaos !  is  restored, 

Light  dies  before  tJiy  uncrcating  word, 

Thy  hand,  great  Anarch!  lets  the  curtain  fall; 

And  universal  darkness  buries  all. 

Dr.  Johnson  said  that  these  verses  were  the  noblest 
in  English  poetry.  Could  he  have  read  them  in  our 
day,  and  have  realised  with  what  a  pitiful  accuracy 
their  prophecy  might  soon  begin  to  fulfil  itself,  he 
would  probably  have  been  too  busy  with  dissatis- 
faction at  the  matter  of  it  to  have  any  time  to  spare 
for  an  artistic  approbation  of  the  manner. 


CHAPTER  Yin. 

THE  PRACTICAL  PROSPECT. 

Not  from  the  stars  do  I  my  judgment  pluck    .    .    . 
Nor  can  I  fortune  to  brief  minutes  tell. 

Shakespeare,  Sonnet  XIV. 

THE  prospects  I  have  been  just  describing  as  the 
goal  of  positive  progress  will  seem,  no  doubt,  to  many 
to  be  quite  impossible  in  its  cheerlessness.  If  the 
future  glory  of  our  race  was  a  dream,  not  worth  dwell- 
ing on,  much  more  so,  they  will  say,  is  such  a  future 
abasement  of  it  as  this.  They  will  say  that  optimism 
may  at  times  have  perhaps  been  over-sanguine,  but 
that  this  was  simply  the  exuberance  of  health ; 
whereas  pessimism  is,  in  its  very  nature,  the  gloom 
and  languor  of  a  disease. 

Now  with  much  of  this  view  of  the  matter  I  en- 
tirely agree.  I  admit  that  the  prospect  I  have  de- 
scribed may  be  an  impossible  one  ;  personally,  I 
believe  it  is  so.  I  admit  also  that  pessimism  is  the 
consciousness  of  disease,  confessing  itself.  But  the 
significance  of  these  admissions  is  the  very  oppo- 
site of  what  it  is  commonly  supposed  to  be.  They 
do  not  make  the  pessimism  I  have  been  arguing  one 
whit  less  worthy  of  attention  ;  on  the  contrary,  they 

183 


184  -B9  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

make  it  more  worthy.  This  is  the  point  on  which 
I  may  most  readily  be  misunderstood.  I  will 
therefore  try  to  make  my  meaning  as  clear  as  pos- 
sible. 

Pessimism,  then,  represents,  to  the  popular  mind, 
a  philosophy  or  view  of  life  the  very  name  of  which 
is  enough  to  condemn  it.  The  popular  mind,  how- 
ever, overlooks  one  important  point.  Pessimism  is 
a  vague  word.  It  does  not  represent  one  philosophy, 
but  several;  and  before  we,  in  any  case,  reject  its 
claims  on  our  attention,  we  should  take  care  to  see 
what  its  exact  meaning  is. 

The  views  of  life  it  includes  may  be  classified  in 
two  ways.  In  the  first  place,  they  are  either  what 
we  may  call  critical  pessimisms  or  prospective  pes- 
simisms :  of  which  the  thesis  of  the  first  is  that  hu- 
man life  is  essentially  evil ;  and  of  the  second,  that 
whatever  human  life  may  be  now,  its  tendency  is  to 
get  worse  instead  of  better.  The  one  is  the  denial 
of  human  happiness ;  the  other  the  denial  of  human 
hope.  But  there  is  a  second  classification  to  make, 
traversing  this  one,  and  far  more  important.  Pes- 
simism may  be  either  absolute  or  hypothetical.  The 
first  of  these  maintains  its  theses  as  statements  of 
actual  facts ;  the  second,  which  is,  of  its  nature,  pro- 
spective mainly,  only  maintains  them  as  statements 
of  what  will  be  facts,  in  the  event  of  certain  possible 
though  it  may  be  remote  contingencies. 


THE  PRACTICAL  PROSPECT.  185 

Now,  absolute  pessimism,  whether  it  be  critical  or 
prospective,  can  be  nothing,  in  the  present  state  of 
the  world,  but  an  exhibition  of  ill  temper  or  folly. 
It  is  hard  to  imagine  a  greater  waste  of  ingenuity 
than  the  attempts  that  have  been  made  sometimes  to 
deduce  from  the  nature  of  pain  and  pleasure,  that 
the  balance  in  life  must  be  always  in  favour  of  the 
former,  and  that  life  itself  is  necessarily  and  univer- 
sally'an  evil.  Let  the  arguments  be  never  so  elabor- 
ate, they  are  blown  away  like  cobwebs  by  a  breath 
of  open-air  experience.  Equally  useless  are  the  at- 
tempts to  predict  the  gloom  of  the  future.  Such 
predictions  either  mean  nothing,  or  else  they  are 
mere  loose  conjectures,  suggested  by  low  spirits  or 
disappointment.  They  are  of  no  philosophic  or 
scientific  value  ;  and  though  in  some  cases  they  may 
give  literary  expression  to  moods  already  existing, 
they  will  never  produce  conviction  in  minds  that 
would  else  be  unconvinced.  The  gift  of  prophecy 
as  to  general  human  history  is  not  a  gift  that  any 
philosophy  can  bestow.  It  could  only  be  acquired 
through  a  superhuman  inspiration  which  is  denied 
to  man  or  through  a  superhuman  sagacity  which  is 
never  attained  by  him. 

The  hypothetical  pessimism  that  is  contained  in 
my  arguments  is  a  very  different  thing  from  this,  and 
far  humbler.  It  makes  no  foolish  attempts  to  say 
anything  general  about  the  present,  or  anything  ab- 


186  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

solute  about  the  future.  As  to  the  future,  it  only 
takes  the  absolute  things  that  have  been  said  by 
others  ;  and  not  professing  any  certainty  about  their 
truth,  merely  explains  their  meaning.  It  deals  with  a 
certain  change  in  human  beliefs,  now  confidently  pre- 
dicted ;  but  it  does  not  say  that  this  prediction  will  be 
fulfilled.  It  says  only  that  if  it  be,  a  change,  not  at 
present  counted  on,  will  be  effected  in  human  life. 
It  says  that  human  life  will  degenerate  if  the  creed  of 
positivism  be  ever  generally  accepted  ;  but  it  not  only 
does  not  say  that  it  ever  will  be  accepted  by  every- 
body :  rather,  it  emphatically  points  out  that  as  yet 
it  has  been  accepted  fully  by  nobody.  The  positive 
school  say  that  their  view  of  life  is  the  only  sound 
one.  They  boast  that  it  is  founded  on  the  rock  of 
fact,  not  on  the  sand-bank  of  sentiment ;  that  it  is 
the  final  philosophy,  that  will  last  as  long  as  man 
lasts,  and  that  very  soon  it  will  have  seen  the  extinc- 
tion of  all  the  others.  It  is  the  positivists  who  are 
the  prophets,  not  I.  My  aim  has  been  not  to  confirm 
the  prophecy,  but  to  explain  its  meaning ;  and  my 
arguments  will  be  all  the  more  opportune  at  the 
present  moment,  the  more  reason  we  have  to  think 
the  prophecy  false. 

It  may  be  asked  why,  if  we  think  it  false,  we 
should  trouble  our  heads  about  it.  And  the  answer 
to  this  is  to  be  found  in  the  present  age  itself. 
Whatever  may  be  the  future  fate  of  positive  thought, 


THE  PRACTICAL  PROSPECT.  18? 

whatever  confidence  may  be  felt  by  any  of  us  that  it 
cannot  in  the  long  run  gain  a  final  hold  upon  the 
world,  its  present  power  and  the  present  results  of 
it  cannot  be  overlooked.  That  degradation  of  life 
that  I  have  been  describing  as  the  result  of  positivism 
—of  what  the  age  we  live  in  calls  the  only  rational 
view  of  things — may  indeed  never  be  completed  ;  but 
let  us  look  carefully  around  us,  and  we  shall  see  that 
it  is  already  begun.  The  process,  it  is  true,  is  at 
present  not  very  apparent ;  or  if  it  is,  its  nature  is 
altogether  mistaken.  This,  however,  only  makes  it 
more  momentous ;  and  the  great  reason  why  it  is 
desirable  to  deal  so  rudely  with  the  optimist  system 
of  the  positivists  is  that  it  lies  like  a  misty  veil 
over  the  real  surface  of  facts,  and  conceals  the  very 
change  that  it  professes  to  make  impossible.  It  is  a 
kind  of  moral  chloroform,  which,  instead  of  curing  an 
illness,  only  makes  us  fatally  unconscious  of  its  most 
alarming  symptoms. 

But  though  an  effort  be  thus  required  to  realise 
our  true  condition,  it  is  an  effort  which,  before  all 
things,  we  ought  to  make ;  and  which,  if  we  try,  we 
can  all  make  readily.  A  little  careful  memory,  a 
little  careful  observation,  will  open  the  eyes  of  most 
of  us  to  the  real  truth  of  things  ;  it  will  reveal  to  us 
a  spectacle  that  is  indeed  appalling,  and  the  more 
candidly  we  survey  it,  the  more  shall  we  feel  aghast 
at  it.  To  begin,  then,  let  us  once  more  consider  two 


188  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

notorious  facts :  first,  that  over  all  the  world  at  the 
present  day  a  denial  is  spreading  itself  of  all  relig- 
ious dogmas,  more  complete  than  has  ever  before 
been  known ;  and,  secondly,  that  in  spite  of  this 
speculative  denial,  and  in  the  places  where  it  has 
done  its  work  most  thoroughly,  a  mass  of  moral 
earnestness  seems  to  survive  untouched.  I  do  not 
attempt  to  deny  the  fact ;  I  desire,  on  the  contrary, 
to  draw  all  attention  to  it.  But  the  condition  in 
which  it  survives  is  commonly  not  in  the  least  real- 
ised. The  class  of  men  concerned  with  it  are  like 
soldiers  who  may  be  fighting  more  bravely  perhaps 
than  ever ;  but  who  are  fighting,  though  none  ob- 
serve it,  with  the  death- wound  under  their  uniforms. 
Of  all  the  signs  of  the  times,  these  high-minded  un- 
believers are  thought  to  be  the  most  reassuring  ;  but 
really  they  are  the  very  reverse  of  this.  The  reason 
why  their  true  condition  has  passed  unnoticed  is, 
that  it  is  a  condition  that  is  naturally  silent,  and 
that  has  great  difficulty  in  finding  a  mouthpiece. 
The  only  two  parties  who  have  had  any  interest  in 
commenting  on  it  have  been  the  very  parties  least 
able  to  understand,  and  most  certain  to  distort  it. 
They  have  been  either  the  professed  champions  of 
theism,  or  else  the  visionary  optimists  of  positivism ; 
the  former  of  whom  have  had  no  sympathy  with 
positive  principles,  and  the  latter  no  discernment  of 
their  results.  The  class  of  men  we  are  considering 


THE  PRACTICAL  PROSPECT. 

are  equally  at  variance  with  both  of  these ;  they 
agree  with  each  in  one  respect,  and  in  another  they 
agree  with  neither.  They  agree  with  the  one  that 
religious  belief  is  false ;  they  agree  with  the  other 
that  unbelief  is  miserable.  What  wonder  then  that 
they  should  have  kept  their  condition  to  them- 
selves ?  Nearly  all  public  dealing  with  it  has  been 
left  to  men  who  can  praise  the  only  doctrines  that 
they  can  preach  as  true,  or  who  else  can  condemn 
as  false  the  doctrines  that  they  deplore  as  mischiev- 
ous. As  for  the  others,  whose  mental  and  moral 
convictions  are  at  variance,  they  have  neither  any 
heart  to  proclaim  the  one,  nor  any  intellectual  stand- 
point from  which  to  proclaim  the  other.  Their  only 
impulse  is  to  struggle  and  to  endure  in  silence. 
Let  us,  however,  try  to  intrude  upon  their  privacy, 
even  though  it  be  rudely  and  painfully,  and  see 
what  their  real  state  is  ;  for  it  is  these  men  who  are 
the  true  product  of  the  present  age,  its  most  special 
and  distinguishing  feature,  and  the  first-fruits  of 
what  we  are  told  is  to  be  the  philosophy  of  the  en- 
lightened future. 

To  begin,  then,  let  us  remember  what  these  men 
were  when  Christians  ;  and  we  shall  be  better  able  to 
realise  what  they  are  now.  They  were  men  who  be- 
lieved firmly  in  the  supreme  and  solemn  importance 
of  life,  in  the  privilege  that  it  was  to  live,  despite  all 
temporal  sorrow.  They  had  a  rule  of  conduct  which 


190  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

would  guide  them,  they  believed,  to  the  true  end  of 
their  being — to  an  existence  satisfying  and  excellent 
beyond  anything  that  imagination  could  suggest  to 
them  ;  they  had  the  dread  of  a  corresponding  ruin 
to  fortify  themselves  in  their  struggle  against  the 
wrong ;  and  they  had  a  God  ever  present,  to  help 
and  hear,  and  take  pity  on  them.  And  yet  even 
thus,  selfishness  would  beset  the  most  unselfish,  and 
weariness  the  most  determined.  How  hard  the  bat- 
tle was,  is  known  to  all ;  it  has  been  the  most  promi- 
nent commonplace  in  human  thought  and  language. 
The  constancy  and  the  strength  of  temptation,  and 
the  insidiousness  of  the  arguments  it  was  supported 
by,  has  been  proverbial.  To  explain  away  the  dif- 
ference between  good  and  evil,  to  subtly  steal  its 
meaning  out  of  long-suffering  and  self-denial,  and, 
above  all,  to  argue  that  in  sinning  'we  shall  not 
surely  die?  a  work  which  was  supposed  to  belong 
especially  to  the  devil,  has  been  supposed  to  have 
been  accomplished  by  him  with  a  success  continually 
irresistible.  What,  then,  is  likely  to  be  the  case 
now,  with  men  who  are  still  beset  with  the  same 
temptations,  when  not  only  they  have  no  hell  to 
frighten,  no  heaven  to  allure,  and  no  God  to  help 
them  ;  but  when  all  the  arguments  that  they  once 
felt  belonged  to  the  father  of  lies,  are  pressed  on 
them  from  every  side  as  the  most  solemn  and  uni- 
versal truths  ?  Thus  far  the  result  has  been  a  singu- 


THE  PRACTICAL  PROSPECT.  191 

lar  one.  With  an  astonishing  vigour  the  moral  im- 
petus still  survives  the  cessation  of  the  forces  that 
originated  and  sustained  it ;  and  in  many  cases  there 
is  no  diminution  of  it  traceable,  so  far  as  action  goes. 
This,  however,  is  only  true,  for  the  most  part,  of 
men  advanced  in  years,  in  whom  habits  of  virtue 
have  grown  strong,  and  whose  age,  position,  and 
circumstances  secure  them  from  strong  temptation. 
To  see  the  real  work  of  positive  thought  we  must  go 
to  younger  men,  whose  characters  are  less  formed, 
whose  careers  are  still  before  them,  and  on  whom 
temptation  of  all  kinds  has  stronger  hold.  We  shall 
find  such  men  with  the  sense  of  virtue  equally  vivid 
in  them,  and  the  desire  to  practise  it  probably  far 
more  passionate ;  but  the  effect  of  positive  thought 
on  them  we  shall  see  to  be  very  different. 

Now,  the  positive  school  itself  will  say  that  such 
men  have  all  they  need.  They  confessedly  have 
conscience  left  to  them — the  supernatural  moral 
judgment,  that  is,  as  applied  to  themselves — which 
has  been  analysed,  but  not  destroyed  ;  and  the  posi- 
tion of  which,  we  are  told,  has  been  changed  only  by 
its  being  set  on  a  foundation  of  fact,  instead  of  a 
foundation  of  superstition.  Mill  said  that  having 
learnt  what  the  sunset  clouds  were  made  of,  he  still 
found  that  he  admired  them  as  much  as  ever ;  '  there- 
fore^ he  said,  ll  saw  at  once  that  there  was  nothing 
to  be  feared  from  analysis.''  And  this  is  exactly 


192  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIYWG? 

what  the  positive  school  say  of  conscience.  A 
shallower  falsehood,  however,  it  is  not  easy  to  con- 
ceive. It  is  true  that  conscience  in  one  way  may, 
for  a  time  at  least,  survive  any  kind  of  analysis.  It 
may  continue,  with  undiminished  distinctness,  its 
old  approvals  and  menaces.  But  that  alone  is  noth- 
ing at  all  to  the  point.  Conscience  is  of  practical 
value,  not  only  because  it  says  certain  things, 
but  because  it  says  them,  as  we  think,  with  au- 
thority. If  its  authority  goes,  and  its  advice  con- 
tinues, it  may  indeed  molest,  but  it  will  no  longer 
direct  us.  Now,  though  the  voice  of  conscience  may, 
as  the  positive  school  say,  survive  their  analysis  of 
it,  its  authority  will  not.  That  authority  has  always 
taken  the  form  of  a  menace,  as  well  as  of  an  appro- 
val ;  and  the  menace  at  any  rate,  upon  all  positive 
principles,  is  nothing  but  big  words  that  can  break 
no  bones.  As  soon  as  we  realise  it  to  be  but  this,  its 
effect  must  cease  instantly.  The  power  of  conscience 
resides  not  in  what  we  hear  it  to  be,  but  in  what 
we  believe  it  to  be.  A  housemaid  may  be  deterred 
from  going  to  meet  her  lover  in  the  garden,  because 
a  howling  ghost  is  believed  to  haunt  the  laurels  ;  but 
she  will  go  to  him  fast  enough  when  she  discovers 
that  the  sounds  that  alarmed  her  were  not  a  soul  in 
torture,  but  the  cat  in  love.  The  case  of  conscience 
is  exactly  analogous  to  this. 
And  now  let  us  turn  again  to  the  case  in  question. 


TUE  PRACTICAL  PROSPECT  193 

Men  of  such  a  character  as  I  have  been  just  describ- 
ing may  find  conscience  quite  equal  to  giving  a  glow, 
by  its  approval,  to  their  virtuous  wishes ;  but  they 
will  find  it  quite  unequal  to  sustaining  them  against 
their  vicious  ones  ;  and  the  more  vigorous  the  intel- 
lect of  the  man,  the  more  feeble  will  be  the  power  of 
conscience.  When  a  man  is  very  strongly  tempted 
to  do  a  thing  which  he  believes  to  be  wrong,  it  is  al- 
most inevitable  that  he  will  test  to  the  utmost  the 
reasons  of  this  belief ;  or  if  he  does  not  do  this 
before  he  yields  to  the  temptation,  yet  if  he  does 
happen  to  yield  to  it,  he  will  certainly  do  so  after. 
Thus,  unless  we  suppose  human  nature  to  be  com- 
pletely changed,  and  all  our  powers  of  observation 
completely  misleading,  the  inward  condition  of  the 
class  in  question  is  this.  However  calm  the  outer 
surface  of  their  lives  may  seem,  under  the  surface 
there  is  a  continual  discord ;  and  also,  though  they 
alone  may  perceive  it,  a  continued  decadence.  In 
various  degrees  they  all  yield  to  temptation  ;  all 
men  in  the  vigour  of  their  manhood  do ;  and  con- 
science still  fills  them  with  its  old  monitions  and  re- 
proaches. But  it  cannot  enforce  obedience.  They 
feel  it  to  be  the  truth,  but  at  the  same  time  they 
know  it  to  be  a  lie ;  and  though  they  long  to  be 
coerced  by  it,  they  find  it  cannot  coerce  them.  Rea- 
son, which  was  once  its  minister,  is  now  the  tribune 
of  their  passions,  and  forbids  them,  in  times  of 
13 


194  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

passion,  to  submit  to  it.  They  are  not  suffered  to 
forget  that  it  is  not  what  it  says  it  is,  that 

It  never  came  from  on  high, 
And  never  rose  from  below  : 

and  they  cannot  help  chiding  themselves  with  the 
irrepressible  self-reproach, 

Am  I  to  l)e  overawed 

By  what  I  cannot  but  know, 
Is  a  juggle  born  of  the  brain  ? 

Thus  their  conscience,  though  not  stifled,  is  de- 
throned ;  it  is  become  a  fugitive  Pretender ;  and  that 
part  of  them  that  would  desire  its  restoration  is  set 
down  as  an  intellectual  malignant,  powerless  indeed 
to  restore  its  sovereign. 

Invalidasque  tibi  tendens,  lieu  non  tua,  palmas. 

Conscience,  in  short,  as  soon  as  its  power  is  needed, 
is  like  their  own  selves  dethroned  within  themselves, 
wringing  its  hands  over  a  rebellion  it  is  powerless  to 
suppress.  And  then,  when  the  storm  is  over,  when 
the  passions  again  subside,  and  their  lives  once  more 
return  to  their  wonted  channels,  it  can  only  come 
back  humbly  and  dejected,  and  give  them  in  a  timid 
voice  a  faint,  dishonoured  blessing. 

Such  lives  as  these  are  all  of  them  really  in  a  state 
of  moral  consumption.  The  disease  in  its  earlier 
stage  is  a  very  subtle  one ;  and  it  may  not  be  gener- 


THE  PRACTICAL  PROSPECT.  195 

ally  fatal  for  years,  or  even  for  generations.  But  it 
is  a  disease  that  can  be  transmitted  from  parent  to 
child  ;  and  its  progress  is  none  the  less  sure  because 
it  is  slow ;  nor  is  it  less  fatal  and  painful  because  it 
may  often  give  a  new  beauty  to  the  complexion.  On 
various  constitutions  it  takes  hold  in  various  ways, 
and  its  presence  is  first  detected  by  the  sufferer  un- 
der various  trials,  and  betrayed  to  the  observer  by 
various  symptoms.  What  I  have  just  been  describ- 
ing is  the  action  that  is  at  the  root  of  it ;  but  with 
the  individual  it  does  not  always  take  that  form. 
Often  indeed  it  does  ;  but  oftener  still  perhaps  it  is 
discovered  not  in  the  helpless  yet  reluctant  yielding 
to  vice,  but  in  the  sadness  and  the  despondency  with 
which  virtue  is  practised — in  the  dull  leaden  hours 
of  blank  endurance  or  of  difficult  endeavour  ;  or  in 
the  little  satisfaction  that,  when  the  struggle  has 
ceased,  the  reward  of  struggle  brings  with  it. 

An  earlier,  and  perhaps  more  general  symptom 
still,  is  one  that  is  not  personal.  It  consists  not  in 
the  way  in  which  men  regard  themselves,  but  in  the 
way  in  which  they  regard  others.  In  their  own  case, 
their  habitual  desire  of  right,  and  their  habitual 
aversion  to  wrong,  may  have  been  enough  to  keep 
them  from  any  open  breach  with  conscience,  or  from 
putting  it  to  an  open  shame.  But  its  precarious  po- 
sition is  revealed  to  them  when  they  turn  to  others. 
Sin  from  which  they  recoil  themselves  they  see  com- 


196  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  t 

mitted  in  the  life  around  them,  and  they  find  that  it 
cannot  excite  the  horror  or  disapproval,  which  from 
its  supposed  nature  it  should.  They  find  themselves 
powerless  to  pass  any  general  judgment,  or  to  ex- 
tend the  law  they  live  by  to  any  beyond  themselves. 
The  whole  prospect  that  environs  them  has  become 
morally  colourless ;  and  they  discern  in  their  atti- 
tude towards  the  world  without,  what  it  must  one 
day  come  to  be  towards  the  world  within.  A  state 
of  mind  like  this  is  no  dream.  It  is  a  malady  of  the 
modern  world — a  malady  of  our  own  generation, 
which  can  escape  no  eyes  that  will  look  for  it.  It  is 
betraying  itself  every  moment  around  us,  in  conver- 
sation, in  literature,  and  in  legislation. 

Such,  then,  is  the  condition  of  that  large  and  in- 
creasing class  on  which  modern  thought  is  beginning 
to  do  its  wrork.  Its  work  must  be  looked  for  here, 
and  not  in  narrower  quarters  ;  not  amongst  pro- 
fessors and  lecturers,  but  amongst'  the  busy  crowd 
about  us  ;  not  on  the  platforms  of  institutions,  or 
in  the  lay  sermons  of  specialists,  but  amongst  politi- 
cians, artists,  sportsmen,  men  of  business,  lovers— 
in  It7ie  tides  of  life,  and  in  the  storm  of  action'1  - 
amongst  men  who  have  their  own  way  to  force  or 
choose  in  the  world,  and  their  daily  balance  to  strike 
between  self-denial  and  pleasure — on  whom  the  posi- 
tive principles  have  been  forced  as  true,  and  who 
have  no  time  or  talent  to  do  anything  else  but  live 


THE  PRACTICAL  PROSPECT.  197 

by  them.  It  is  amongst  these  that  we  must  look 
to  see  what  such  principles  really  result  in  ;  and  of 
these  we  must  choose  not  those  who  would  welcome 
license,  but  those  who  long  passionately  to  live  by 
law.  It  is  the  condition  of  such  men  that  I  have 
been  just  describing.  Its  characteristics  are  vain 
self-reproach,  joyless  commendation,  weary  strug- 
gle, listless  success,  general  indifference,  and  the 
prospect  that  if  matters  are  going  thus  badly  with 
them,  they  will  go  even  worse  with  their  children. 

Such  a  spectacle  certainly  is  not  one  that  has 
much  promise  for  the  optimist ;  and  the  more  we 
consider  it,  the  more  sad  and  ominous  will  it  appear 
to  us.  Indeed,  when  the  present  age  shall  realise  its 
own  condition  truly,  the  dejection  of  which  it  is 
slowly  growing  conscious  may  perhaps  give  way  to 
despair.  This  condition,  however,  is  so  portentous 
that  it  is  difficult  to  persuade  ourselves  that  it  is 
what  it  seems  to  be,  and  that  it  is  not  a  dream.  But 
the  more  steadily  we  look  at  it,  the  more  real  will  its 
appalling  features  appear  to  us.  We  are  literally  in 
an  age  to  which  history  can  show  no  parallel,  and 
which  is  new  to  the  experience  of  humanity ;  and 
though  the  moral  dejection  we  have  been  dwelling 
on  may  have  had  many  seeming  counterparts  in 
other  times,  this  is,  as  it  were,  solid  substance, 
whereas  they  were  only  shadows.  I  have  pointed 
out  already  in  my  first  chapter  how  unexampled  is 


198  -K  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

the  state  in  which  the  world  now  finds  itself ;  but 
we  will  dwell  once  again  upon  its  more  general  fea- 
tures. Within  less  than  a  century,  distance  has  been 
all  but  annihilated,  and  the  earth  has  practically, 
and  to  the  imagination,  been  reduced  to  a  fraction 
of  its  former  size.  Its  possible  resources  have  be- 
come mean  and  narrow,  set  before  us  as  matters  of 
every-day  statistics.  All  the  old  haze  of  wonder  is 
melting  away  from  it ;  and  the  old  local  enthusi- 
asms, which  depended  so  largely  on  ignorance  and 
isolation,  are  melting  likewise.  Knowledge  has  ac- 
cumulated in  a  way  never  before  dreamed  of.  The 
fountains  of  the  past  seem  to  have  been  broken  up, 
and  to  be  pouring  all  their  secrets  into  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  present.  For  the  first  time  man's  wide 
and  varied  history  has  become  a  coherent  whole  to 
him.  Partly  a  cause  and  partly  a  result  of  this,  a 
new  sense  has  sprung  up  in  him — an  intense  self- 
consciousness  as  to  his  own  position ;  and  his  en- 
tire view  of  himself  is  undergoing  a  vague  change : 
whilst  the  positive  basis  on  wrhich  knowledge  has 
been  placed,  has  given  it  a  constant  and  coercive 
force,  and  has  made  the  same  change  common  to  the 
whole  civilised  world.  Thought  and  feeling  amongst 
the  western  nations  are  conforming  to  a  single  pat- 
tern :  they  are  losing  their  old  chivalrous  character, 
their  possibilities  of  isolated  conquest  and  intellec- 
tual adventure.  They  are  settling  down  into  a  uni- 


THE  PRACTICAL  PROSPECT.  199 

form  mass,  that  moves  or  stagnates  like  a  modern 
army,  and  whose  alternative  lines  of  march  have 
been  mapped  out  beforehand.  Such  is  the  condition 
of  the  western  world ;  and  the  western  world  is  be- 
ginning now,  at  all  points,  to  bear  upon  the  east. 
Thus  opinions  that  the  present  age  is  forming  for  it- 
self have  a  weight  and  a  volume  that  opinions  never 
before  possessed.  They  are  the  first  beginnings,  not 
of  natural,  or  of  social,  but  of  human  opinion — an 
oecumenical  self -consciousness  on  the  part  of  man  as 
to  his  own  prospects  and  his  own  position.  The 
great  question  is,  what  shape  finally  will  this  dawn- 
ing self-consciousness  take?  "Will  it  contain  in  it 
that  negation  of  the  supernatural  which  our  positive 
assertions  are  at  present  supposed  to  necessitate  ? 
If  so,  then  it  is  not  possible  to  conceive  that  this  last 
development  of  humanity,  this  stupendous  break 
from  the  past  which  is  being  accomplished  by  our 
understanding  of  it,  will  not  be  the  sort  of  break 
w^hich  takes  place  when  a  man  awakes  from  a  dream, 
and  finds  all  that  he  most  prized  vanished  from  him. 
It  is  impossible  to  conceive  that  this  awakening,  this 
discovery  by  man  of  himself,  will  not  be  the  be- 
ginning of  his  decadence ;  that  it  will  not  be  the 
discovery  on  his  part  that  he  is  a  lesser  and  a  lower 
thing  than  he  thought  he  was,  and  that  his  condi- 
tion will  not  sink  till  it  tallies  with  his  own 
opinion  of  it. 


2')0  IS  LIFE  WOP.TII  LIVING t 

If  this  be  really  the  case,  we  shall  not  be  able  to 
dispose  of  pessimism  by  calling  it  a  disease  ;  for  the 
disease  will  be  real  and  universal,  and  pessimism  will 
be  nothing  but  the  scientific  description  of  it.  The 
pessimist  is  only  silenced  by  being  called  diseased, 
when  it  is  meant  that  the  disease  imputed  to  him  is 
either  hypochondriacal  or  peculiar  to  himself.  But 
in  the  present  case  the  disease  is  real,  deep-seated, 
and  extending  steadily.  The  only  question  for  us 
is,  is  it  curable  or  incurable  ?  This  the  event  alone 
can  answer :  but  as  no  future  can  be  produced  but 
through  the  agency  of  the  present,  the  event,  to  a 
certain  extent,  must  be  in  our  own  hands.  For  us, 
at  any  rate,  the  first  thing  to  be  done  is  to  face  boldly 
our  own  present  condition,  and  the  causes  that  are 
producing  it.  To  become  alive  to  our  danger  is  the 
one  way  to  escape  from  it.  But  the  danger  is  at 
present  felt  rather  than  known.  The  class  of  men 
we  are  considering  are  conscious,  as  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold  says,  '  of  a  void  that  mines  the  breast ; '  but 
each  thinks  that  this  is  a  fancy  only,  and  hardly 
dares  communicate  it  to  his  fellows.  Here  and  there, 
however,  by  accident,  it  is  already  finding  unintended 
expression ;  and  signs  come  to  the  surface  of  the 
vague  distrust  and  misgiving  that  are  working  under 
it.  The  form  it  takes  amongst  the  general  masses 
that  are  affected  by  it  is,  as  might  be  expected,  prac- 
tical rather  than  analytical.  They  are  conscious  of 


THE  PRACTICAL  PROSPECT.  201 

the  loss  that  the  loss  of  faith  is  to  them  ;  and  more 
or  less  coherently  they  long  for  its  recovery.  Out- 
wardly, indeed,  they  may  often  sneer  at  it ;  but  out- 
ward signs  in  such  matters  are  very  deceiving.  Much 
of  the  bitter  and  arrogant  certitude  to  be  found  about 
us  in  the  expression  of  unbelief,  is  really  like  the 
bitterness  of  a  woman  against  her  lover,  which  has 
not  been  the  cause  of  her  resolving  to  leave  him,  but 
which  has  been  caused  by  his  having  left  her.  In 
estimating  what  is  really  the  state  of  feeling  about 
us,  we  must  not  look  only  at  the  surface.  We  must 
remember  that  deep  feeling  often  expresses  itself  by 
contradicting  itself ;  also  that  it  often  exists  where  it 
is  not  expressed  at  all,  or  where  it  betrays  rather 
than  expresses  itself ;  and,  further,  that  during  the 
hours  of  common  intercourse,  it  tends,  for  the  time 
being,  to  disappear.  People  cannot  be  always  ex- 
claiming in  drawing-rooms  that  they  have  lost  their 
Lord ;  and  the  fact  may  be  temporarily  forgotten 
because  they  have  lost  their  portmanteau.  All  se- 
rious reflections  are  like  reflections  in  water — a  pebble 
will  disturb  them,  and  make  a  dull  pond  sparkle. 
But  the  sparkle  dies,  and  the  reflection  comes  again. 
And  there  are  many  about  us,  though  they  never 
confess  their  pain,  and  perhaps  themselves  hardly 
like  to  acknowledge  it,  whose  hearts  are  aching  for 
the  religion  that  they  can  no  longer  believe  in.  Their 
lonely  hours,  between  the  intervals  of  gaiety,  are 


202  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

passed  with  barren  and  sombre  thoughts  ;  and  a  cry 
rises  to  their  lips  but  never  passes  them. 

Amongst  such  a  class  it  is  somehow  startling  to 
find  the  most  unlikely  people  at  times  placing  them- 
selves. Professor  Clifford,  for  instance,  who  of  all 
our  present  positivists  is  most  uproarious  in  his 
optimism,  has  yet  admitted  that  the  religion  he  in- 
vites us  to  trample  on  is,  under  certain  forms,  an 
ennobling  and  sustaining  thing  ;  and  for  such  theism 
as  that  of  Charles  Kingsley's  he  has  expressed  his 
deepest  reverence.  Again,  there  is  Professor  Huxley. 
He  denies  with  the  most  dogmatic  and  unbending 
severity  any  right  to  man  to  any  supernatural  faith  ; 
and  he  '  will  not  for  a  moment  admit '  that  our  higher 
life  will  suffer  in  consequence.1  And  yet  'the  lover 
of  moral  beauty,'  he  says  wistfully,  '  struggling 
through  a  world  of  sorrow  and  sin,  is  surely  as  mucJi 
the  stronger  for  believing  that  sooner  or  later  a  vision 
of  perfect  peace  and  goodness  will  burst  upon  Mm, 
as  the  toiler  up  a  mountain  for  the  belief  that  beyond 
crag  and  snow  lie  home  and  rest.'  And  he  adds,  as 
we  have  seen  already,  that  could  a  faith  like  what 
he  here  indicates  be  placed  upon  a  firm  basis,  man- 
kind would  cling  to  it  as  ' tenaciously  as  ever  a 
drowning  sailor  did  to  a  hen-coop.'  But  all  this 

1 '  For  my  own  part,  I  flo  not  for  one  moment  admit  that  morality  is 
not  strong  enough  to  hold  its  own.' — Prof.  Huxley,  Nineteenth  Century, 
May,  1877. 


THE  PRACTICAL  PROSPECT. 

widespread  and  increasing  feeling  is  felt  at  present 
to  be  of  no  avail.  The  wish  to  believe  is  there  ;  but 
the  belief  is  as  far  off  as  ever.  There  is  a  power  in 
the  air  around  us  by  which  man's  faith  seems  para- 
lysed. The  intellect,  we  were  thinking  but  now,  had 
acquired  a  new  vigour  and  a  clearer  vision  ;  but  the 
result  of  this  growth  is,  with  many,  to  have  made  it 
an  incubus,  and  it  lies  upon  all  their  deepest  hopes 
and  wishes 

Like  a  weight 
Heavy  as  frost,  and  deep  almost  as  life. 

Such  is  the  condition  of  mind  that  is  now  spread- 
ing rapidly,  and  which,  sooner  or  later,  we  must 
look  steadily  in  the  face.  Nor  is  it  confined  to 
those  who  are  its  direct  victims.  Those  who  still 
cling,  and  cling  firmly,  to  belief  are  in  an  indirect 
way  touched  by  it.  Religion  cannot  fail  to  be 
changed  by  the  neighbourhood  of  irreligion.  If  it 
is  persecuted,  it  may  burn  up  with  greater  fervour  ; 
but  if  it  is  not  persecuted,  it  must  in  some  measure 
be  chilled.  Believers  and  unbelievers,  separated  as 
they  are  by  their  tenets,  are  yet  in  these  days  mixed 
together  in  all  the  acts  and  relations  of  life.  They  are 
united  by  habits,  by  blood,  and  by  friendship,  and 
they  are  each  obliged  continually  to  ignore  or  excuse 
what  they  hold  to  be  the  errors  of  the  other.  In  a 
state  of  things  like  this,  it  is  plain  that  the  convic- 


204  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

tion  of  believers  can  have  neither  the  fierce  intensity 
that  belongs  to  a  minority  under  persecution,  nor 
the  placid  confidence  that  belongs  to  an  overwhelm- 
ing majority.  They  can  neither  hate  the  unbeliev- 
ers, for  they  daily  live  in  amity  with  them,  nor  de- 
spise altogether  their  judgment,  for  the  most  emi- 
nent thinkers  of  the  day  belong  to  them.  By  such 
conditions  as  these  the  strongest  faith  cannot  fail  to 
be  affected.  As  regards  the  individuals  who  retain 
it,  it  may  not  lose  its  firmness,  •  but  it  must  lose 
something  of  its  fervour ;  and  as  regards  its  own  fu- 
ture hold  upon  the  human  race,  it  is  faith  no  longer, 
but  is  anxious  doubt,  or,  at  best,  a  desperate  trust. 
Dr.  Newman  has  pointed  out  how  even  the  Pope 
has  recognised  in  the  sedate  and  ominous  rise  of 
our  modern  earth-born  positivism  some  phenomenon 
vaster  and  of  a  different  nature  from  the  outburst  of 
a  petulant  heresy ;  he  seems  to  recognise  it  as  a 
belligerent  rather  than  a  rebel.1  '  One  tiling,"1  says 
Dr.  Newman,  '  except  by  an  almost  miraculous  inter- 
position, cannot  be;  and  that  is  a  return  to  the  uni- 
versal religious  sentiment,  the  public  opinion,  oftlie 
medieval  time.  The  Pope  himself  calls  those  cen- 
turies "the  ages  of  faith"  Such  endemic  faith 
may  certainly  be  decreed  for  some  future  time  ;  but 

1  These  words  may  no  doubt  be  easily  pressed  into  a  sense  which 
Catholics  would  repudiate.  But  if  not  pressed  unduly,  they  repre- 
sent what  will,  I  believe,  be  admitted  to  be  a  fact. 


THE  PRACTICAL  PROSPECT.  205 

as  far  as  we  have  tlie  means  of  judging  at  present, 
centuries  must  run  out  first.'  l 

In  this  last  sentence  is  indicated  the  vast  and  uni- 
versal question,  which  the  mind  of  humanity  is 
gathering  itself  together  to  ask — will  the  faith  that 
we  are  so  fast  losing  ever  again  revive  for  us  ?  And 
my  one  aim  in  this  book  has  been  to  demonstrate 
that  the  entire  future  tone  of  life,  and  the  entire 
course  of  future  civilisation,  depends  on  the  answer 
which  this  question  receives. 

There  is,  however,  this  further  point  to  consider. 
Need  the  answer  we  are  speaking  of  be  definite  and 
universal  ?  or  can  we  look  forward  to  its  remaining 
undecided  till  the  end  of  time  ?  Now  I  have  already 
tried  to  make  it  evident  that  for  the  individual,  at 
any  rate,  it  must  by-and-by  be  definite  one  way  or 
the  other.  The  thorough  positive  thinker  will  not 
be  able  to  retain  in  supreme  power  principles  which 
have  no  positive  basis.  He  cannot  go  on  adoring  a 
hunger  which  he  knows  can  never  be  satisfied,  or 
cringing  before  fears  which  he  knows  will  never  be 
realised.  And  even  if  this  should  for  a  time  be  pos- 
sible, his  case  will  be  worse,  not  better.  Conscience, 
if  it  still  remains  with  him,  will  remain  not  as  a  liv- 
ing thing — a  severe  but  kindly  guide — but  as  the 
menacing  ghost  of  the  religion  he  has  murdered,  and 

1  A  letter  to  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  by  J.  H.  Newman,  D.D.,  p.  35. 
Pickering  :  1875. 


206  18  LIFE   WORTH  LIVING* 

which  comes  to  embitter  degradation,  not  to  raise  it. 
The  moral  life,  it  is  true,  will  still  exist  for  him,  but 
it  will  probably,  in  literal  truth, 

Creep  on  a  broken  wing 
Through  cells  of  madness,  haunts  of  horror  and,  fear. 

But  a  state  of  things  like  this  can  hardly  be  looked 
forward  to  as  conceivably  of  any  long  continuance. 
Religion  would  come  back,  or  conscience  would  go. 
!N"or  do  I  think  that  the  future  which  Dr.  Newman 
seems  to  anticipate  can  be  regarded  as  probable 
either.  He  seems  to  anticipate  a  continuance  side 
by  side  of  faith  and  positivism,  each  with  their  own 
adherents,  and  fighting  a  ceaseless  battle  in  which 
neither  gains  the  victory.  I  venture  to  submit  that 
the  new  forms  now  at  work  in  the  world  are  not 
forms  that  will  do  their  work  by  halves.  When 
once  the  age  shall  have  mastered  them,  they  will  be 
either  one  thing  or  the  other — they  will  be  either 
impotent  or  omnipotent.  Their  public  exponents  at 
present  boast  that  they  will  be  omnipotent ;  and 
more  and  more  the  world  about  us  is  beginning  to 
believe  the  boast.  But  the  world  feels  uneasily  that 
the  import  of  it  will  be  very  different  from  what  we 
are  assured  it  is.  One  English  writer,  indeed,  on  the 
positive  side,  has  already  seen  clearly  what  the 
movement  really  means,  whose  continuance  and 
whose  consummation  he  declares  to  us  to  be  a  neces- 


THE  PRACTICAL  PROSPECT.  207 

sity.  'Never,'  he  says,  '  in  the  history  of  man  has 
so  terrific  a  calamity  befallen  the  race  as  that  which 
all  who  looTc  may  now  behold,  advancing  as  a  deluge, 
black  with  destruction,  resistless  in  might,  uprooting 
our  most  cherished  hopes,  engulfing  our  most  pre- 
cious creed,  and  burying  our  highest  life  in  mindless 
desolation.'9 ' 

The  question  I  shall  now  proceed  to  is  the  exact 
causes  of  this  movement,  and  the  chances  and  the 
powers  that  the  human  race  has  of  resisting  it. 

1  A  Candid  Examination  of  Theism.   By  Physicus.    Triibner  &  Co. : 

1878. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  LOaiC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION. 

I  am  Sir  Oracle, 
And  wJien  I  ope  my  mouth  let  no  dog  bark. 

BEFORE  beginning  to  analyse  the  forces  that  are 
decomposing  religious  belief,  it  will  be  well  to  remark 
briefly  on  the  means  by  which  these  forces  are  ap- 
plied to  the  world  at  large.  To  a  certain  extent  they 
are  applied  directly  ;  that  is,  many  of  the  facts  that 
are  now  becoming  obvious  the  common  sense  of  all 
men  assimilates  spontaneously,  and  derives,  unbid- 
den, its  own  doubts  or  denials  from  them.  But  the 
chief  power  of  positivism  is  derived  otherwise.  It  is 
derived  not  directly  from  the  premisses  that  it  puts 
before  us,  but  from  the  intellectual  prestige  of  its  ex- 
ponents, who,  to  the  destruction  of  private  judgment, 
are  forcing  on  us  their  own  personal  conclusions  from 
them.  This  prestige,  indeed,  is  by  no  means  to  be 
wondered  at.  If  men  ever  believed  a  teacher  lfor  Ms 
works'  sdkej  the  positive  school  is  associated  with 
enough  signs  and  wonders.  All  those  astonishing 
powers  that  man  has  acquired  in  this  century  are 
with  much  justice  claimed  by  it  as  its  works  and  gifts. 
The  whole  sensuous  surroundings  of  our  lives  are  its 

208 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.          2Q9 

subjects,  and  are  doing  it  daily  homage  ;  and  there  is 
not  a  conquest  over  distance,  disease,  or  darkness 
that  does  not  seem  to  bear  witness  to  its  intellectual 
supremacy.  The  opinion,  therefore,  that  is  now 
abroad  in  the  world  is  that  the  positive  school  are 
the  monopolists  of  unbiassed  reason  ;  that  reason, 
therefore,  is  altogether  fatal  to  religion;  and  that 
those  who  deny  this,  only  do  so  through  ignorance 
or  through  wilful  blindness.  As  long  as  this  opinion 
lasts,  the  revival  of  faith  is  hopeless.  What  we  are 
now  about  to  examine  is,  how  far  this  opinion  is  well 
founded. 

The  arguments  which  operate  against  religion  with 
the  leaders  of  modern  thought,  and  through  their  in- 
tellectual example  on  the  world  at  large,  divide  them- 
selves into  three  classes,  and  are  derived  from  three 
distinct  branches  of  thought  and  study.  They  may 
be  distinguished  as  physical,  moral,  and  historical. 
Few  of  these  arguments,  taken  separately,  can  be 
called  altogether  new.  Their  new  power  has  been 
caused  by  the  simultaneous  filling  up  and  comple- 
tion of  all  of  them  ;  by  their  transmutation  from  filmy 
visions  into  massive  and  vast  realities  ;  from  unau- 
thorised misgivings  into  the  most  rigid  and  compel- 
ling of  demonstrations :  and  still  more,  by  the  bril- 
liant and  sudden  annihilation  of  the  most  obvious 
difficulties,  which  till  very  lately  had  neutralised  and 

held  their  poAver  in  check. 
14 


210  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING* 

Of  these  three  sets  of  arguments,  the  two  first  bear 
upon  all  religion,  whilst  the  third  bears  upon  it  only 
as  embodied  in  some  exclusive  form.  Thus  the  phy- 
sicist argues,  for  example,  that  consciousness  being  a 
function  of  the  brain,  unless  the  universe  be  a  single 
brain  itself,  there  can  be  no  conscious  God.1  The 
moral  philosopher  argues  that  sin  and  misery  being 
so  prevalent,  there  can  be  no  Almighty  and  all-mer- 
ciful God.  And  the  historian  argues  that  all  alleged 
revelations  can  be  shown  to  have  had  analogous  his- 
tories ;  and  that  therefore,  even  if  God  exists,  there 
is  no  one  religion  through  which  He  has  specially  re- 
vealed Himself.  These  are  rough  specimens  solubly, 
so  far  as  observation  can  carry  us,  mind  with  mat- 
ter. The  great  gulf  between  the  two  has  at  last  been 
spanned.  The  bridge  across  it,  that  was  so  long  seen 
in  dreams  and  despaired  of,  has  been  thrown  trium- 
phantly— a  solid  compact  fabric,  on  which  a  hundred 
intellectual  masons  are  still  at  work,  adding  stone  on 
ponderous  stone  to  it.  Science,  to  put  the  matter  in 
other  words,  has  accomplished  these  three  things. 
Firstly,  to  use  the  words  of  a  well-known  writer,  '  it 
lias  established  a  functional  relation  to  exist  between 
every  fact  of  thinking,  willing,  or  feeling,  on  the  one 
side,  and  some  molecular  cliange  in  the  body  on  the 
other  side?  Secondly,  it  has  connected,  through 
countless  elusive  stages,  this  organic  human  body 

1  The  argument  has  been  used  in  this  exact  form  by  Professor  Clifford 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.  211 

with  the  universal  lifeless  matter.  And  thirdly,  it 
claims  to  have  placed  the  universal  matter  itself  in  a 
new  position  for  us,  and  to  exhibit  all  forms  of  life  as 
developed  from  it,  through  its  own  spontaneous  mo- 
tion. Thus  for  the  first  time,  beyond  the  reach  of 
question,  the  entire  sensible  universe  is  brought  with- 
in the  scope  of  the  physicist.  Everything  that  is,  is 
matter  moving.  Life  itself  is  nothing  but  motion  of 
an  infinitely  complex  kind.  It  is  matter  in  its  finest 
ferment.  The  first  traceable  beginnings  of  it  are  to 
be  found  in  the  phenomenon  of  crystallisation  ;  we 
have  there,  we  are  told  by  the  highest  scientific  au- 
thority, '  the  first  gr oping s  of  the  so-called  vital 
force;1  and  we  learn  from  the  same  quarter,  that  be- 
tween these  and  the  brain  of  Christ  there  is  a  differ- 
ence in  degree  only,  not  in  kind  :  they  are  each  of 
them  '  an  assemblage  of  molecules,  acting  and  re-act- 
ing according  to  law, , '  *  We  believe, '  says  Dr.  Tyndall, , 
( that  every thought  and  every  feeling  has  its  definite 
mechanical  correlative — that  it  is  accompanied  by  a 
certain  breaking  up  and  re-marshalling  of  the  atoms 
of  the  brain'  And  though  he  of  course  admits  that 
to  trace  out  the  processes  in  detail  is  infinitely  be- 
yond our  powers,  yet  lthe  quality  of  the  problem  and 
of  our  powers'  he  says,  'are,  we  believe,  so  related, 
that  a  mere  expansion  of  the  latter  would  enable  them 
to  cope  with  the  former'  Nowhere  is  there  any  break 
in  Nature  ;  and  ' supposing,'  in  Dr.  Tyndall' s  words, 


212  IS  LIFE  WOR1H  LIVING  f 

'  a  planet  carved  from  the  sun,  set  spinning  on  an 
axis,  and  sent  revolving  round  the  sun  at  a  distance 
equal  to  tliat  of  our  earth,''  science  points  to  the  con- 
clusion that  as  the  mass  cooled,  it  would  flower  out 
in  places  into  just  such  another  race  as  ours — crea- 
tures of  as  large  discourse,  and,  like  ourselves,  look- 
ing before  and  after.  The  result  is  obvious.  Every 
existing  thing  that  we  can  ever  know,  or  hope  to 
know,  in  the  whole  inward  as  well  as  in  the  whole 
outward  world — everything  from  a  star  to  a  thought, 
or  from  a  flower  to  an  affection,  is  connected  with  cer- 
tain material  figures,  and  with  certain  mechanical 
forces.  All  have  a  certain  bulk  and  a  certain  place 
in  space,  and  could  conceivably  be  made  the  subjects 
of  some  physical  experiment.  Faith,  sanctity,  doubt, 
sorrow,  and  love,  could  conceivably  be  all  gauged 
and  detected  by  some  scientific  instrument — by  a 
camera  or  by  a  spectroscope ;  and  their  conditions 
and  their  intensity  be  represented  by  some  sort  of  di- 
agram. 

These  marvellous  achievements,  as  I  have  said, 
have  been  often  before  dreamed  of.  Now  they  are 
accomplished.  As  applied  to  natural  religion,  the 
effect  of  them  is  as  follows. 

Firstly,  with  regard  to  God,  they  have  taken  away 
every  external  proof  of  His  existence,  and,  still 
more,  every  sign  of  His  daily  providence.  They  de- 
stroy them  completely  at  a  sudden  and  single  blow, 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.          213 

and  send  them  falling  about  us  like  so  many  dead 
flies.  God,  as  connected  with  the  external  world, 
was  conceived  of  in  three  ways — as  a  Mover,  as  a 
Designer,  and  as  a  Superintendent.  In  the  first  two 
capacities  He  was  required  by  thought ;  in  the  last, 
He  was  supposed  to  be  revealed  by  experience.  But 
now  in  none  of  these  is  He  required  or  revealed  lon- 
ger. So  far  as  thought  goes,  He  has  become  a  su- 
perfluity ;  so  far  as  experience  goes,  He  has  become 
a  fanciful  suggestion. 

Secondly,  with  regard  to  man,  the  life  and  soul 
are  presented  to  us,  not  as  an  entity  distinct  from 
the  body,  and  therefore  capable  of  surviving  it,  but 
as  a  function  of  it,  or  the  sum  of  its  functions,  which 
has  demonstrably  grown  with  its  growth,  which  is 
demonstrably  dependent  upon  even  its  minutest 
changes,  and  which,  for  any  sign  or  hint  to  the  con- 
trary, will  be  dissolved  with  its  dissolution. 

A  God,  therefore,  that  is  the  master  of  matter,  and 
a  human  soul  that  is  independent  of  it — any  second 
world,  in  fact,  of  alien  and  trans-material  forces,  is 
reduced,  on  physical  grounds,  to  an  utterly  unsup- 
ported hypothesis.  Were  this  all,  however,  it  would 
logically  have  on  religion  no  effect  at  all.  It  would 
supply  us  with  nothing  but  the  barren  verbal  propo- 
sition that  the  immaterial  was  not  material,  or  that 
we  could  find  no  trace  of  it  by  merely  studying  mat- 
ter. Its  whole  force  rests  on  the  following  sup- 


214  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

pressed  premiss,  that  nothing  exists  but  what  the 
study  of  matter  conceivably  could  reveal  to  us  ;  or 
that,  in  other  words,  the  immaterial  equals  the  non- 
existent. The  case  stands  thus.  The  forces  of 
thought  and  spirit  were  supposed  formerly  to  be 
quite  distinct  from  matter,  and  to  be  capable  of  act- 
ing without  the  least  connection  with  it.  Now,  it  is 
.shown  that  every  smallest  revelation  of  these  to  us, 
-is  accomplished  by  some  local  atomic  movement, 
which,  on  a  scientific  instrument  fine  enough,  would 
leave  a  distinct  impression  ;  and  thus  it  is  argued 
that  no  force  is  revealed  through  matter  that  is  not 
inseparable  from  the  forms  revealing  it.  Here  we 
see  the  meaning  of  that  great  modern  axiom,  that 
verification  is  the  test  of  truth  ;  or  that  we  can  build 
on  nothing  as  certain  but  what  we  can  prove  true. 
The  meaning  of  the  word  i proof  by  itself  may  per- 
haps be  somewhat  hazy  ;  but  the  meaning  that  posi- 
tive science  attaches  to  it  is  plain  enough.  A  fact 
is  only  proved  when  the  evidence  it  rests  upon  leaves 
us  no  room  for  doubt — when  it  forces  on  every  mind 
the  same  invincible  conviction  ;  that  is,  in  other 
words,  when,  directly  or  indirectly,  its  material 
equivalent  can  be  impressed  upon  our  bodily  senses. 
This  is  the  fulcrum  of  the  modern  intellectual 
lever.  Ask  anyone  oppressed  and  embittered  by  the 
want  of  religion  the  reason  why  he  does  not  again  em- 
brace it,  and  the  answer  will  still  be  this — that  there 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.         215 

is  no  proof  that  it  is  true.  Granting,  says  Professor 
Huxley,  that  a  religious  creed  would  be  beneficial,  '  my 
next  step  is  to  ask  for  a  proof  of  its  dogmas. ,'  And 
with  contemptuous  passion  another  well-known  writer, 
Mr.  Leslie  Stephen,  has  classified  all  beliefs,  accord- 
ing as  we  can  prove  or  not  prove  them,  into  realities 
and  empty  dreams.  '  The  ignorant  and  childish,''  he 
says,  '  are  hopelessly  unable  to  draw  the  line  "between 
dreamland  and  reality  ;  but  the  imagery  which 
takes  its  rise  in  the  imagination  as  distinguished 
from  the  perceptions,  bears  indelible  traces  of  its 
origin  in  comparative  unsubstantiality  and  vague- 
ness of  outline.''  And  '•now?  he  exclaims,,  turning 
to  the  generation  around  him,  '  at  last  your  creed  is 
decaying.  People  have  discovered  that  you  know 
nothing  about  it;  that  heaven  and  hell  belong  to 
dreamland  ;  that  the  impertinent  young  curate  who 
tells  me  that  I  shall  be  burnt  everlastingly  for  not 
sharing  his  superstition,  is  just  as  ignorant  as  1 
myself,  and  that  I  know  as  much  as  my  dog.'1 ' 

Such  is  that  syllogism  of  the  physical  sciences 
which  is  now  supposed  to  be  so  invincible  against  all 
religion,  and  which  has  already  gone  so  far  towards 
destroying  the  world's  faith  in  it.  Now  as  to  the 
minor  premiss,  that  there  is  no  proof  of  religion,  we 
may  concede,  at  least  provisionally,  that  it  is  com- 
pletely true.  What  it  is  really  important  to  examine 

1  Dreams  and  Realities,  by  Leslie  Stephen. 


216  18  LIFE   WORTH  LIVING  f 

is  the  major  premiss,  that  we  can  be  certain  of  noth- 
ing that  we  cannot  support  by  proof.  This  it  is  plain 
does  not  stand  on  the  same  footing  as  the  former,  for 
it  is  of  its  very  nature  not  capable  of  being  proved 
itself.  Its  foundation  is  something  far  less  definable 
—the  general  character  for  wisdom  of  the  leading 
thinkers  who  have  adopted  it,  and  the  general  ac- 
ceptance of  its  consequences  by  the  common  sense  of 
mankind. 

Now  if  we  examine  its  value  by  these  tests,  the 
result  will  be  somewhat  startling.  We  find  that  not 
only  are  mankind  at  large  as  yet  but  very  partially 
aware  of-  its  consequences,  but  that  its  true  scope  and 
meaning  has  not  even  dawned  dimly  on  the  leading 
thinkers  themselves.  Few  spectacles,  indeed,  in 
the  whole  history  of  thought  are  more  ludicrous 
than  that  of  the  modern  positive  school  with  their 
great  doctrine  of  verification.  They  apply  it  rigor- 
ously to  one  set  of  facts,  and  then  utterly  fail  to  see 
that  it  is  equally  applicable  to  another.  They  apply 
it  to  religion,  and  declare  that  the  dogmas  of  religion 
are  dreams ;  but  when  they  pass  from  the  dogmas 
of  religion  to  those  of  morality,  they  not  only  do 
not  use  their  test,  but  unconsciously  they  denounce 
it  with  the  utmost  vehemence.  Thus  Mr.  Leslie 
Stephen,  in  the  very  essay  from  which  I  have  just 
now  quoted,  not  only  has  recourse,  for  giving  weight 
to  his  arguments,  to  such  ethical  epithets  as  low, 


TUB  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.          217 

,  and  even  sacred,  but  he  puts  forward  as  his  own 
motive  for  speaking,  a  belief  which  on  his  own  show- 
ing is  a  dream.  That  motive,  he  says,  is  devotion  to 
truth  for  its  own  sake — the  only  principle  that  is 
really  worthy  of  man.  His  argument  is  simply  this. 
It  is  man's  holiest  and  most  important  duty  to  dis- 
cover the  truth  at  all  costs,  and  the  one  test  of  truth 
is  physical  verification.  Here  he  tells  us  we  find 
the  only  high  morality,  and  the  men  who  cling  to 
religious  dream-dogmas  which  they  cannot  physic- 
ally verify,  can  only  answer  their  opponents,  says 
Mr.  Stephen,  '  by  a  shriek  or  a  sneer'  '  The  senti- 
ment,' he  proceeds,  ^  which  the  dreamer  most  tJior- 
ouyhly  hates  and  misunderstands,  is  the  love  of 
truth  for  its  own  sake.  He  cannot  conceive  why  a 
man  should  attack  a  lie  simply  because  it  is  a  lie.' 
Mr.  Stephen  is  wrong.  That  is  exactly  what  the 
dreamer  can  do,  and  no  one  else  but  he ;  and  Mr. 
Stephen  is  himself  a  dreamer  when  he  writes  and 
feels  like  this.  Why,  let  me  ask  him,  should  the 
truth  be  loved  ?  Do  the  'perceptions,'  which  are  for 
him  the  only  valid  guides,  tell  him  so?  The  per- 
ceptions tell  him,  as  he  expressly  says,  that  the 
truths  of  nature,  so  far  as  man  is  concerned  with 
them,  are  ''harsh'  truths.  Why  should  ' harsh* 
things  be  loveable  ?  Or  supposing  Mr.  Stephen  does 
love  them,  why  is  that  love  *  lofty'  \  and  why  should 
he  so  brusquely  command  all  other  men  to  share  it  \ 


218  -28  LIFE   WORTH  LIVING? 

Low  and  lofty — what  has  Mr.  Stephen  to  do  with 
words  like  these  ?  They  are  part  of  the  language  of 
dreamland,  not  of  real  life.  Mr.  Stephen  has  no  right 
to  them.  If  he  has,  he  must  be  able  to  draw  a  hard 
and  fast  line  between  them  ;  for  if  his  conceptions  of 
them  be  '  vague  in  outline''  and  '  unsubstantial?  they 
belong  by  his  own  express  definition  to  the  land  of 
dreams.  But  this  is  what  Mr.  Stephen,  with  the 
solemn  imbecility  of  his  school,  is  quite  incapable  of 
seeing.  Professor  Huxley  is  in  exactly  'the  same 
case.  He  says,  as  we  have  seen  already,  that,  come 
what  may  of  it,  our  highest  morality  is  to  follow 
truth ;  that  the  '  lowest  depth  of  immorality '  is  to 
pretend  to  believe  what  we  see  no  reason  for  believ- 
ing; '  and  that  our  only  proper  reasons  for  belief  are 
some  physical,  some  perceptible  evidence.  And  yet 
at  the  same  time  he  says  that  to  '  attempt  to  upset 
morality'  by  the  help  of  the  physical  sciences  is 
about  as  rational  or  as  possible  as  to  '  attempt  to  upset 
Euclid  by  tlie  help  of  the  Rig  Veda.'  Now  on  Pro- 
fessor Huxley's  principles,  this  last  sentence,  though 
it  sounds  very  weighty,  is,  if  so  ungracious  a  word 
may  be  allowed  me,  nothing  short  of  nonsense.  It 
would  be  the  lowest  depth  of  immorality,  he  says,  to 
believe  in  God,  when  we  see  that  there  is  no  physical 
evidence  to  justify  the  belief.  And  physical  science 
in  this  way  he  admits — he  indeed  proclaims — has 
upset  religion.  How  then  has  physical  science  in 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.         219 

the  same  way  failed  to  upset  morality  ?  The  founda- 
tion of  morality,  he  says,  is  the  belief  that  truth  for 
its  own  sake  is  sacred.  But  what  proof  can  he  dis- 
cover of  this  sacredness  ?  Does  any  positive  method 
of  experience  or  observation  so  much  as  tend  to  sug- 
gest it?  We  have  already  seen  that  it  does  not. 
What  Professor  Huxley's  philosophy  really  proves 
to  him  is  that  it  is  true  that  nothing  is  sacred  ;  not 
that  it  is  a  sacred  thing  to  discover  the  truth. 

We  saw  all  this  already  when  we  were  examining 
his  comparison  of  the  perception  of  moral  beauty  to 
the  perception  of  the  heat  of  ginger.  It  is  the  same 
thing  with  which  we  are  again  dealing  now,  only  we 
are  approaching  it  from  a  slightly  different  point  of 
view.  What  we  saw  before,  was  that  without  an 
assent  to  the  religious  dogmas,  the  moral  dogmas 
can  have  no  logical  meaning.  We  have  now  seen 
that  even  were  the  two  logically  independent,  they 
yet  belong  both  of  them  to  the  same  order  of  things  ; 
and  that  if  our  tests  of  truth  prove  the  former  to  be 
illusions,  they  will,  with  precisely  the  same  force, 
prove  the  same  thing  of  the  latter. 

But  the  most  crucial  test  of  all  we  have  still  to 
come  to,  which  will  put  this  conclusion  in  a  yet 
clearer  and  a  more  unmistakable  light.  Thus  far 
what  we  have  seen  has  amounted  to  only  this — that 
if  science  can  take  from  man  his  religious  faith,  it 
leaves  him  a  being  without  any  moral  guidance. 


220  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

What  we  shall  now  see  is  that,  by  the  same  argu- 
ments, it  will  prove  him  to  be  not  a  moral  being  at 
all ;  that  it  will  prove  not  only  that  he  has  no  rule 
by  which  to  direct  his  will,  but  also  that  he  has  no 
will  to  direct. 

To  understand  this  we  must  return  to  physical 
science,  and  to  the  exact  results  that  have  been  ac- 
complished by  it.  We  have  seen  how  completely, 
from  one  point  of  view,  it  has  connected  mind  with 
matter,  and  how  triumphantly  it  is  supposed  to  have 
unified  the  apparent  dualism  of  things.  It  has  re- 
vealed the  brain  to  us  as  matter  in  a  combination  of 
infinite  complexity,  which  it  has  reached  at  last 
through  its  own  automatic  workings  ;  and  it  has 
revealed  consciousness  to  us  as  a  function  of  this 
brain,  and  as  altogether  inseparable  from  it.  But 
for  this,  the  old  dualism  now  supposed  to  be  obsolete 
would  remain  undisturbed.  Indeed,  if  this  doctrine 
were  denied,  such  a  dualism  would  be  the  only  alter- 
native. For  every  thought,  then,  that  we  think,  and 
every  feeling  or  desire  that  we  feel,  there  takes  place 
in  the  brain  some  definite  material  movement,  on  the 
force  or  figure  of  which  the  thoughts  and  feelings  are 
dependent.  Now  if  physical  observations  are  to  be 
the  only  things  that  guide  us,  one  important  fact 
will  become  at  once  evident.  Matter  existed  and 
fermented  long  before  the  evolution  of  mind  ;  mind 
is  not  an  exhibition  of  new  forces,  but  the  outcome 


I  HE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.         221 

of  a  special  combination  of  old.  Mental  facts  are 
therefore  essentially  dependent  on  molecular  facts  ; 
molecular  facts  are  not  dependent  on  mental.  They 
may  seem  to  be  so,  but  this  is  only  seeming.  They 
are  as  much  the  outcome  of  molecular  groupings  and 
movements  as  the  figures  in  a  kaleidoscope  are  of 
the  groupings  and  movements  of  the  colored  bits  of 
glass.  They  are  things  entirely  by  the  way ;  and 
they  can  as  little  be  considered  links  in  any  chain  of 
causes  as  can  the  figure  in  a  kaleidoscope  be  called 
the  cause  of  the  figure  that  succeeds  it. 

The  conclusion,  however,  is  so  distasteful  to  most 
men,  that  but  few  of  them  can  be  brought  even  to 
face  it,  still  less  to  accept  it.  There  is  not  a  single 
physicist  of  eminence — none  at  least  who  has  spoken 
publicly  on  the  moral  aspects  of  life — who  has 
honestly  and  fairly  considered  it,  and  said  plainly 
whether  he  accepts  it,  rejects  it,  or  is  in  doubt  about 
it.  On  the  contrary,  instead  of  meeting  this  ques- 
tion, they  all  do  their  best  to  avoid  it,  and  to  hide  it 
from  themselves  and  others  in  a  vague  haze  of  mys- 
tery. And  there  is  a  peculiarity  in  the  nature  of  the 
subject  that  has  made  this  task  an  easy  one.  But 
the  dust  they  have  raised  is  not  impenetrable,  and 
can,  with  a  little  patience,  be  laid  altogether. 

The  phenomenon  of  consciousness  is  in  one  way 
unique.  It  is  the  only  phenomenon  with  which 
science  comes  in  contact,  of  which  the  scientific 


222  JS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

imagination  cannot  form  a  coherent  picture.  It  has 
a  side,  it  is  true,  that  we  can  picture  well  enough — 
'  the  thrilling  of  the  nerves,'  as  Dr.  Tyndall  says, 
'  the  discharging  of  the  muscles,  and  all  the  subse- 
quent changes  of  the  organism.1  But  of  how  these 
changes  come  to  have  another  side,  we  can  form  no 
picture.  This,  it  is  perfectly  true,  is  a  complete 
mystery.  And  this  mystery  it  is  that  our  modern 
physicists  seize  on,  and  try  to  hide  and  lose  in  the 
shadow  of  it  a  conclusion  which  they  admit  that,  in 
any  other  case,  a  rigorous  logic  would  force  on  them. 
The  following  is  a  typical  example  of  the  way  in 
which  they  do  this.  It  is  taken  from  Dr.  Tyndall. 
'  The  mechanical  philosopher,  as  such,'  he  says, 
twill  never  place  a  state  of  consciousness  and  a 
group  of  molecules  in  the  position  of  mover  and 
moved.  Observation  proves  them  to  interact;  but  in 
passing  from  one  to  the  other,  we  meet  a  blank  which 
the  logic  of  deduction  is  unable  to  fill.  .  .  .  I 
lay  bare  unsparingly  the  initial  difficulty  of  the 
materialist,  and  tell  him  that  the  facts  of  observa- 
th*i  w\l?h  7ie  cmsidirs  so  simple  are  "almost 
as  difficult  to  be  seized  as  the  idea  of  a  soul"  I  go 
further,  and  say  in  effect :  "If  you  abandon  the  in- 
terpretation of  grosser  minds,  who  image  the  soul 
as  a  Psyche  which  could  be  thrown  out  of  the  win- 
dow— an  entity  which  is  usually  occupied  we  know 
not  how,  among  the  molecules  of  the  brain,  but  which 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.         223 

on  due  occasion,  such  as  the  intrusion  of  a  bullet, 
or  the  blow  of  a  club,  can  fly  away  into  oilier  regions 
of  space — if  abandoning  this  heathen  notion  you 
approach  the  subject  in  the  only  way  in  which  ap- 
proach is  possible — if  you  consent  to  make  your 
soul  a  poetic  rendering  of  a  phenomenon  which — as 
I  have  taken  more  pains  than  anyone  else  to  sJiow 
you — refuses  the  ordinary  yoke  of  physical  laws, 
then  I,  for  one,  would  not  object  to  this  exercise  of 
ideal!  ff/.^  I  say  it  strongly,  but  with  good  temper, 
that  the  theologian  who  hacks  and  scourges  me  for 
putting  the  matter  in  this  light  is  guilty  of  black 
ingratitude.1 

Now  if  we  examine  tlus  very  typical  passage,  we 
shall  see  that  in  it  are  confused  two  questions  which, 
as  regards  our  own  relation  to  them,  are  on  a  totally 
different  footing.  One  of  these  questions  cannot  be 
answered  at  all.  The  other  can  be  answered  in  dis- 
tinct and  opposite  ways.  About  the  one  we  must 
rest  in  wonder ;  about  the  other  we  must  make  a 
choice.  And  the  feat  which  our  modern  physicists 
are  trying  to  perform  is  to  hide  the  importunate 
nature  of  the  second  in  the  dark  folds  of  the  first. 
This  first  question  is,  Why  should  consciousness  be 
connected  with  the  brain  at  all  ?  The  second  ques- 
tion is,  What  is  it  when  connected  ?  Is  it  simply  the 
product  of  the  brain's  movement ;  or  is  the  brain's 
movement  in  any  degree  produced  by  it  ?  We  only 


224  23  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

know  it,  so  to  speak,  as  the  noise  made  by  the  work- 
ing of  the  brain's  machinery — as  the  crash,  the  roar, 
or  the  whisper  of  its  restless  colliding  molecules.  Is 
this  machinery  self-moving,  or  is  it,  at  least,  modu- 
lated, if  not  moved,  by  some  force  other  than  itself  ? 
The  brain  is  the  organ  of  consciousness,  just  as  the 
instrument  called  an  organ  is  an  organ  of  music : 
and  consciousness  itself  is  as  a  tune  emerging  from  the 
organ-pipes.  Expressed  in  terms  of  this  metaphor 
our  two  questions  are  as  follows.  The  first  is,  Why, 
when  the  air  goes  through  them,  are  the  organ-pipes 
resonant  ?  The  second  is,  What  controls  the  mech- 
anism by  which  the  air  is  regulated — a  musician,  or 
a  revolving  barrel  ?  Now  what  our  modern  physicists 
fail  to  see  is,  not  only  that  these  two  questions  are 
distinct  in  detail,  but  that  also  they  are  distinct  in 
kind  ;  that  a  want  of  power  to  answer  them  means, 
in  the  two  cases,  not  a  distinct  thing  only,  but  also 
an  opposite  thing ;  and  that  our  confessed  impo- 
tence to  form  any  conjecture  at  all  as  to  the  first, 
does  not  in  the  least  exonerate  us  from  choosing  be- 
tween conjectures  as  to  the  second. 

As  to  the  first  question,  our  discovery  of  the  fact 
it  is  concerned  with,  and  our  utter  inability  to  ac- 
count for  this  fact,  has  really  no  bearing  at  all  upon 
the  great  dilemma — the  dilemma  as  to  the  unity  or 
the  dualism  of  existence,  and  the  independence  or 
automatism  of  the  life  and  will  of  man.  All  that 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.          225 

science  tells  us  on  this  first  head  the  whole  world 
may  agree  with,  with  the  utmost  readiness ;  and  if 
any  theologian  '  hacks  and  scourges '  Dr.  Tyndall  for 
his  views  thus  far,  he  must,  beyond  all  doubt,  be  a 
very  foolish  theologian  indeed.  The  whole  bearing 
of  this  matter  modern  science  seems  to  confuse  and 
magnify,  and  it  fancies  itself  assaulted  by  opponents 
who  in  reality  have  no  existence.  Let  a  man  be 
never  so  theological,  and  never  so  pledged  to  a  faith 
in  myths  and  mysteries,  he  would  not  have  the  least 
interest  in  denying  that  the  brain,  though  we  know 
not  how,  is  the  only  seat  for  us  of  thought  and  mind 
and  spirit.  Let  him  have  never  so  firm  a  faith  in 
life  immortal,  yet  this  immortal  has,  he  knows,  put 
on  mortality,  through  an  inexplicable  contact  with 
matter ;  and  his  faith  is  not  in  the  least  shaken  by 
learning  that  this  point  of  contact  is  the  brain.  He 
can  admit  with  the  utmost  readiness  that  the  brain 
is  the  only  instrument  through  which  supernatural 
life  is  made  at  the  same  time  natural  life.  He  can 
admit  that  the  moral  state  of  a  saint  might  be  de- 
tected by  some  form  of  spectroscope.  At  first  sight, 
doubtless,  this  may  appear  somewhat  startling ;  but 
there  is  nothing  really  in  it  that  is  either  strange  or 
formidable.  Dr.  Tyndall  says  that  the  view  indi- 
cated can,  '  lie  tliinksj  be  maintained  '  against  all 
attack?  But  why  he  should  apprehend  any  attack 
at  all,  and  why  he  should  only  '  think '  it  would  be 
15 


226  *S  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

unsuccessful,  it  is  somewhat  hard  to  conceive.  To  say 
that  a  spectroscope  as  applied  to  the  brain  might 
conceivably  detect  such  a  thing  as  sanctity,  is  little 
more  than  to  say  that  our  eyes  as  applied  to  the  face 
can  actually  detect  such  a  thing  as  anger.  There  is 
nothing  in  that  doctrine  to  alarm  the  most  mystical 
of  believers.  In  the  completeness  with  which  it  is 
now  brought  before  us  it  is  doubtless  new  and  won- 
derful, and  will  doubtless  tend  presently  to  clarify 
human  thought.  But  no  one  need  fear  to  accept  it 
as  a  truth  ;  and  probably  before  long  we  shall  all 
accept  it  as  a  truism.  It  is  not  denying  the  exist- 
ence of  a  soul  to  say  that  it  cannot  move  in  matter 
without  leaving  some  impress  in  matter,  any  more 
than  it  is  denying  the  existence  of  an  organist  to 
say  that  he  cannot  play  to  us  without  striking  the 
notes  of  his  organ.  Dr.  Tyndall  then  need  hardly 
have  used  so  much  emphasis  and  iteration  in  affirm- 
ing that '  every  thought  and  feeling  has  its  definite 
mechanical  correlative,  that  it  is  accompanied  ~by  a 
certain  breaking-up  and  remarshalling  of  the  atoms 
of  the  brain.'9  And  he  is  no  more  likely  to  be  '  hacked 
and  scourged^  for  doing  so  than  he  would  be  for  af- 
firming that  every  note  we  hear  in  a  piece  of  music 
has  its  definite  correlative  in  the  mechanics  of  the 
organ,  and  that  it  is  accompanied  by  a  depression 
and  a  rising  again  of  some  particular  key.  In  his 
views  thus  far  the  whole  world  may  agree  with  him  ; 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.          227 

whilst  when  he  adds  so  emphatically  that  in  these 
views  there  is  still  involved  a  mystery,  we  shall  not 
so  much  say  that  the  world  agrees  with  him  as  that 
he,  like  a  good  sensible  man,  agrees  with  the  world. 
The  passage  from  mind  to  matter  is,  Dr.  Tyndall 
says,  unthinkable.  The  common  sense  of  mankind 
has  always  said  the  same.  We  have  here  a  some- 
thing, not  which  we  are  doubtful  how  to  explain, 
but  which  we  cannot  explain  at  all.  We  have  not 
to  choose  or  halt  between  alternative  conjectures, 
for  there  are  absolutely  no  conjectures  to  halt  be- 
tween. We  are  now,  as  to  this  point,  in  the  same 
state  of  mind  in  which  we  have  always  been,  only 
this  state  of  mind  has  been  revealed  to  us  more 
clearly.  We  are  in  theoretical  ignorance,  but  we 
are  in  no  practical  perplexity. 

The  perplexity  c'omes  in  with  the  second  question  ; 
and  it  is  here  that  the  issue  lies  between  the  affirma- 
tion and  the  denial  of  a  second  and  a  supernatural 
order.  We  will  see,  first,  how  this  question  is  put 
and  treated  by  Dr.  Tyndall,  and  we  will  then  sea 
what  his  treatment  comes  to.  Is  it  true,  he  asks,  as 
many  physicists  hold  it  is,  'that  the  physical  pr  ex- 
cesses are  complete  in  themselves,  and  would  go  on 
just  as  they  do  if  consciousness  were  not  at  all  im- 
plicated^ as  an  engine  might  go  on  working  though 
it  made  no  noise,  or  as  a  barrel-organ  might  go  on 
playing  even  though  there  were  no  ear  to  listen  to 


228  18  LIFE   WORTH  LIVING? 

it?  Or  do  'states  of  consciousness  enter  as  links 
into  the  chain  of  antecedence  and  sequence  whiclt 
gives  rise  to  bodily  actions  f '  Such  is  the  question 
in  Dr.  Tyndall's  own  phrases  ;  and  here,  in  his  own 
phrases  also,  comes  his  answer.  '  I  have  no  power,'' 
he  says,  '  of  imagining  such  states  interposed  be- 
tween the  molecules  of  the  brain,  and  influencing 
the  transference  of  motion  among  the  molecules. 
The  thing  eludes  all  mental  presentation.  But,''  he 
adds,  '  the  production  of  consciousness  by  molecular 
motion  is  quite  as  unpresentable  to  the  mental  vision 
as  tfie  production  of  molecular  motion  by  conscious- 
ness. If  I  reject  one  result,  I  reject  both.  I,  however, 
reject  neither,  and  thus  stand  in  the  presence  of  two 
Incomprehensibles,  instead  of  one  Incomprehensible.'' 
Now  what  does  all  this  mean  \  There  is  one  mean- 
ing of  which  the  words  are  capable,  which  would 
make  them  perfectly  clear  and  coherent ;  but  that 
meaning,  as  we  shall  see  presently,  cannot  possibly 
be  Dr.  Tyndall's.  They  would  be  perfectly  clear 
and  coherent  if  he  meant  this  by  them — that  the 
brain  was  a  natural  instrument,  in  the  hands  of  a 
supernatural  player ;  but  that  why  the  instrument 
should  be  able  to  be  played  upon,  and  how  the 
player  should  be  able  to  play  upon  it,  were  both 
matters  on  which  he  could  throw  no  light.  But 
elsewhere  he  has  told  us  expressly  that  he  does  not 
mean  this.  This  he  expressly  says  is  '  the  interpre- 


THE  LOOK  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.          229 

tat  ion  of  grosser  minds,'  and  science  will  not  for 
a  moment  permit  ns  to  retain  it.  The  brain  con- 
tains no  '  entity  usually  occupied  we  know  not  how 
amongst  its  molecules,'  but  at  the  same  time  separa- 
ble from  them.  According  to  him,  this  is  a  'hea- 
then' notion,  and,  until  we  abandon  it,  lno  ap- 
proach,' he  says,  '  to  the  subject  is  possible'  What 
does  he  mean,  then,  when  he  tells  us  he  rejects 
neither  result ;  when  he  tells  us  that  he  believes  that 
molecular  motion  produces  consciousness,  and  also 
that  consciousnsss  in  its  turn  produces  molecular 
motion  ? — when  he  tells  us  distinctly  of  these  two 
that  '  observation  proves  them  to  interact'  f  If  such 
language  as  this  means  anything,  it  must  have  ref- 
erence to  two  distinct  forces,  one  material  and  the 
other  immaterial.  Indeed,  does  he  not  himself  say 
so  ?  Does  he  not  tell  us  that  one  of  the  beliefs  he 
does  not  reject  is  the  belief  in  '  states  of  conscious- 
ness interposed  between  the  molecules  of  the  brain, 
and  influencing  the  transference  of  motion  among 
the  molecules '  f  It  is  perfectly  clear,  then,  that 
these  states  are  not  molecules  ;  in  other  words,  they 
are  not  material.  But  if  not  material,  what  are  they, 
acting  on  matter,  and  yet  distinct  from  matter? 
What  can  they  belong  to  but  that  'heathen'  thing 
the  soul — that  '  entity  which  could  be  thrown  out  of 
the  window,'  and  which,  as  Dr.  Tyndall  has  said 
elsewhere,  science  forbids  us  to  believe  in  ?  Surely 


230  IS  LIFE   WORTH  LIVING? 

for  an  exact  thinker  this  is  thought  in  strange  con- 
fusion. '  Matter,''  he  says,  '  I  define  as  tJiat  myste- 
rious something  by  w7dc?t  all  this  is  accomplished  /' 
and  yet  here  we  find  him,  in  the  face  of  this,  invok- 
ing some  second  mystery  as  well.  And  for  what 
reason  ?  This  is  the  strangest  thing  of  all.  He  be- 
lieves in  his  second  Incomprehensible  because  he  be- 
lieves in  his  first  Incomprehensible.  '  If  I  reject 
one  result^  ne  says,  '  /must  reject  both.  /,  however, 
reject  neither.'  But  why  ?  Because  one  undoubted 
fact  is  a  mystery,  is  every  mystery  an  undoubted 
fact  ?  Such  is  Dr.  TyndalTs  logic  in  this  remarkable 
utterance  :  and  if  this  logic  be  valid,  we  can  at  once 
prove  to  him  the  existence  of  a  personal  God,  and  a 
variety  of  other  '  heathen '  doctrines  also.  But,  ap- 
plied in  this  way,  it  is  evident  that  the  argument 
fails  to  move  him  ;  for  a  belief  in  a  personal  God  is 
one  of  the  first  things  that  his  science  rejects.  What 
shall  we  say  of  him,  then,  when  he  applies  the  argu- 
ment in  his  own  way  ?  We  can  say  simply  this— 
that  his  mind  for  the  time  being  is  in  a  state  of  such 
confusion,  that  he  is  incapable  really  of  clearly 
meaning  anything.  What  his  position  logically 
must  be — what,  on  other  occasions,  he  clearly  avows 
it  to  be — is  plain  enough.  It  is  essentially  that  of  a 
man  confronted  by  one  Incomprehensible,  not  con- 
fronted by  two.  But,  looked  at  in  certain  ways,  or 
rather  looked  from  in  certain  ways,  this  position 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.         231 

seems  to  stagger  him.  The  problem  of  existence 
reels  and  grows  dim  before  him,  and  he  fancies  that 
he  detects  the  presence  of  two  Incomprehensibles, 
when  he  has  really,  in  his  state  of  mental  insobriety, 
only  seen  one  Incomprehensible  double.  If  this  be 
not  the  case,  it  must  be  one  that,  intellectually,  is  even 
weaker  than  this.  It  must  be  that,  not  of  a  man  with  a 
single  coherent  theory  which  his  intellect  in  its  less 
vigorous  moments  sometimes  relaxes  its  hold  upon, 
but  it  must  be  that  of  a  man  with  two  hostile  theories 
which  he  vainly  imagines  to  be  one,  and  which  he 
inculcates  alternately,  each  with  an  equal  emphasis. 

If  this  bewilderment  were  peculiar  to  Dr.  Tyndall, 
I  should  have  no  motive  or  meaning  in  thus  dwelling 
on  it.  But  it  is  no  peculiarity  of  his.  It  is  charac- 
teristic of  the  whole  school  he  belongs  to  ;  it  is  in- 
herent in  our  whole  modem  positivism — the  whole  of 
our  exact  and  enlightened  thought.  I  merely  choose 
Dr.  Tyndall  as  my  example,  not  because  there  is 
more  confusion  in  his  mind  than  there  is  in  that  of 
his  fellow-physicists,  but  because  he  is,  as  it  were,  the 
enfant  terrible  of  his  family,  who  publicly  lets  out  the 
secrets  which  the  others  are  more  careful  to  conceal. 

But  I  have  not  done  with  this  matter  yet.  We 
are  here  dealing  with  the  central  problem  of  things, 
and  we  must  not  leave  it  till  we  have  made  it  as 
plain  as  possible.  I  will  therefore  re-state  it  in 
terms  of  another  metaphor.  Let  us  compare  the 


232  IB  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

universal  matter,  with  its  infinity  of  molecules,  to  a 
number  of  balls  on  a  billiard-table,  set  in  motion  by 
the  violent  stroke  of  a  cue.  The  balls  at  once  begin 
to  strike  each  other  and  rebound  from  the  cushions 
at  all  angles  and  in  all  directions,  and  assume  with 
regard  to  each  other  positions  of  every  kind.  At 
last  six  of  them  collide  or  cannon  in  a  particular 
corner  of  the  table,  and  thus  group  themselves  so  as 
to  form  a  human  brain ;  and  their  various  changes 
thereafter,  so  long  as  the  brain  remains  a  brain,  rep- 
resent the  various  changes  attendant  on  a  man's 
conscious  life.  Now  in  this  life  let  us  take  some 
moral  crisis.  Let  us  suppose  the  low  desire  to  cling 
to  some  pleasing  or  comforting  superstition  is  con- 
tending with  the  heroic  desire  to  face  the  naked 
truth  at  all  costs.  The  man  in  question  is  at  first 
about  to  yield  to  the  low  desire.  For  a  time  there 
is  a  painful  struggle  in  him.  At  last  there  is  a  sharp 
decisive  pang;  the  heroic  desire  is  the  conquerer, 
the  superstition  is  cast  away,  and  '  though  truth  slay 
me?  says  the  man,  ''yet  will  I  trust  in  it."1  Such  is 
the  aspect  of  the  question  when  approached  from 
one  side.  'But  what  is  it  when  approached  from  the 
other  \  The  six  billiard  balls  have  simply  changed 
their  places.  When  they  corresponded  to  low  de- 
sire, they  formed,  let  us  say,  an  oval ;  when  they 
corresponded  to  the  heroic  desire,  they  formed,  let  us 
say,  a  circle.  Now  what  is  the  cause  and  what  the 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.         233 

conditions  of  this  change  ?  Clearly  a  certain  impe- 
tus imparted  to  the  balls,  and  certain  fixed  laws 
under  which  that  impetus  operates.  The  question 
is  what  laws  and  what  impetus  are  these  ?  Are  they 
the  same  or  not  the  same,  now  the  balls  correspond 
to  consciousness,  as  they  were  before,  when  the 
balls  did  not  correspond  to  it  ?  One  of  two  things 
must  happen.  Either  the  balls  go  on  moving  by 
exactly  the  same  laws  and  forces  they  have  always 
moved  by,  and  are  in  the  grasp  of  the  same  invinci- 
ble necessity,  or  else  there  is  some  new  and  disturb- 
ing force  in  the  midst  of  them,  with  which  we  have 
to  reckon.  But  if  consciousness  is  inseparable  from 
matter,  this  cannot  be.  Do  the  billiard-balls  when 
so  grouped  as  to  represent  consciousness  generate 
some  second  motive  power  distinct  from,  at  variance 
with,  and  often  stronger  than,  the  original  impetus? 
Clearly  no  scientific  thinker  can  admit  this.  To  do 
so  would  be  to  undermine  the  entire  fabric  of  science, 
to  contradict  what  is  its  first  axiom  and  its  last  con- 
clusion. If  then  the  motion  of  our  six  billiard  balls 
has  anything,  when  it  corresponds  to  consciousness, 
distinct  in  kind  from  what  it  always  had,  it  can 
only  derive  this  from  one  cause.  That  cause  is  a 
second  cue,  tampering  with  the  balls  and  interfering 
with  them,  or  even  more  than  this — a  second  hand 
taking  them  up  and  arranging  them  arbitrarily  in 
certain  figures. 


234  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

Science  places  the  positive  school  on  the  horns  of 
a  dilemma.  The  mind  or  spirit  is  either  arranged 
entirely  by  the  molecules  it  is  connected  with,  and 
these  molecules  move  with  the  same  automatic 
necessity  that  the  earth  moves  with  ;  or  else  these 
molecules  are,  partially  at  least,  arranged  by -the 
mind  or  spirit.  If  we  do  not  accept  the  former 
theory  wTe  must  accept  the  latter :  there  is  no  third 
course  open  to  us.  If  man  is  not  an  automaton,  his 
consciousness  is  no  mere  function  of  any  physical 
organ.  It  is  an  alien  and  disturbing  element.  Its 
impress  on  physical  facts,  its  disturbance  of  phys- 
ical laws,  may  be  doubtless  the  only  things  through 
which  we  can  perceive  its  existence  ;  but  it  is  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  things  by  which  we  can  alone  at  pres- 
ent perceive  it,  as  a  hand  unseen  in  the  dark,  that 
should  arrest  or  change  the  course  of  a  phospho- 
rescent billiard-ball.  Once  let  us  deny  even  in  the 
most  qualified  way  that  the  mind  in  the  most  abso- 
lute way  is  a  material  machine,  an  automaton,  and 
in  that  denial  we  are  affirming  a  second  and  imma- 
terial universe,  independent  of  the  material,  and 
obeying  different  laws.  But  of  this  universe,  if  it 
exists,  no  natural  proof  can  be  given,  because  ex 
Ttypothesi  it  lies  quite  beyond  the  region  of  nature. 

One  theory  then  of  man's  life  is  that  it  is  a  union 
of  two  orders  of  things  ;  another,  that  it  is  single,  and 
belongs  to  only  one.  And  of  these  theories — oppo- 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.          235 

site,    and   mutually  exclusive,    Dr.   Tyndall,    and 
modern  positivism  with  him,  says  '  I  reject  neither.''1 

1  The  feebleness  and  vacillation  of  Dr.  Tyndall's  whole  views  of 
things,  as  soon  as  they  bear  on  matters  that  are  of  any  universal 
moment,  is  so  typical  of  the  entire  positive  thought  of  the  day,  that 
I  may  with  advantage  give  one  or  two  further  illustrations  of  it. 
Although  in  one  place  he  proclaims  loudly  that  the  emergence  of  con- 
sciousness from  matter  must  ever  remain  a  mystery,  he  yet  shows  in- 
dication of  a  hope  that  it  may  yet  be  solved.  He  quotes  with  approval, 
and  with  an  implication  that  he  himself  leans  to  the  view  expressed 
in  them,  the  following  words  of  Ueberweg,  whom  he  calls  'one  of  the 
subtlest  heads  that  Germany  has  produced.'  '  What  hop-pens  in  the  brain, 
says  Ueberweg,  'would  in  my  opinion  not  be  possible  if  the  process 
which  here  appears  in  its  greatest  concentration,  did  not  obtain  generally , 
only  in  a  vastly  diminished  degree.  Take  a  pair  of  mice,  and  a  ra&k  of 
flour.  By  copious  nourishment  the  animals  increase  and  multiply,  and 
in  the  same  proportion  sensations  and  feelings  augment.  The  quantity 
of  these  preserved  by  the  first  pair  is  not  simply  diffused  amor*g  their 
descendants,  for  in  that  case  the  last  would  feel  more  fully  than  tJie  first. 
The  sensations  and  the  feelings  must  necessarily  be  referred  back  to  tJie 
flour,  where  they  exist,  weak  and  pule,  it  is  true,  and  not  concentrated, 
as  in  the  brain.'  '  We  may  not,'  Dr.  Tyndall  adds,  by  way  of  a  gloss 
to  this,  '  be  able  to  taste  or  smsll  alcohol  in  a  tub  of  fermented  cherries, 
but  by  distillation  we  obtain  from  tliem  concentrated  Kirschwasscr. 
Hence  Ueberweg's  comparison  of  the  brain  to  a  still,  which  concentrates 
the  sensation  and  feeling  pre-existing,  but  diluted,  in  Hie  food' 

Let  us  now  compare  this  with  the  following.  '  It  is  no  explanation,' 
says  Dr.  Tyndall, '  to  say  that  objective  and  subjective  are  two  sides  of  one 
and  Hie  same  phenomenon.  Why  should  phenomena  7wve  two  sides  ? 
Thire  are  plenty  of  molecular  motions  which  do  not  exhibit  this  two- 
eidedness.  Does  water  think  or  feel  icJien  it  runs  into  frost-ferns  upon  a 
windoic  pane  ?  If  not,  why  should  the  molecular  motions  of  Hie  brain  be 
yoked  to  this  mysterious  companion  consciousness  ? ' 

Here  we  have  two  views,  diametrically  opposed  to  each  other,  the 
one  suggested  with  approval,  and  the  other  implied  as  his  own,  by 
the  same  writer,  and  in  the  same  short  essay.  The  first  view  is  that 
consciousness  is  the  general  property  of  all  matter,  just  as  motion  is. 
The  second  view  is  that  consciousness  is  not  the  general  property  of 
matter,  but  the  inexplicable  property  of  the  brain  only. 


236  18  LIFE   WORTH  LIVING  f 

Now  this  statement  of  their  position,  if  taken  as 
tlrey  state  it,  is  of  course  nonsense.  It  is  impossible 

Here  again  we  have  a  similar  inconsistency.  Upon  one  page  Dr. 
Tyndall  says  that  when  we  have  '  e.rJuiusted  physics,  and  reached  its 
very  rim,  a  mighty  Mystery  stills  looms  beyond  u*.  We  have  made  no 
step  towards  its  solution.  And  thus  it  witt  ever  loom.'  And  on  the  opposite 
page  he  says  thus  :  '  If  asked  wliether  science  has  solved,  or  is  likely  in  our 
day  to  solve,  the  problem  of  the  universe,  I  must  shake  my  Jiead  in  doubt.' 

Further,  I  will  remind  the  reader  of  Dr.  Tyndall's  arguments,  on  one 
occasion,  against  any  outside  builder  or  creator  of  the  material  universe. 
He  argued  that  such  did  not  exist,  because  his  supposed  action  was 
not  definitely  presentable.  '  I  should  enquire  after  its  shape,'  he  says  : 
— '  Has  it  legs  or  arms?  If  not,  I  would  wish  it  to  be  made  clear  to  me 
how  a  thing  irithout  these  appliances  can  act  so  perfectly  the  part  of  a 
builder  f  He  challenged  the  theist  (the  theist  addressed  at  the  time 
was  Dr.  Martineau)  to  give  him  some  account  of  his  God's  workings  ; 
and  '  When  he  docs  this,'  said  Dr.  Tyndall,  '  /  shall  "  demand  of  him 
an  immediate  exercise  "  of  the  power  "  of  definite  mental  presentation." ' 
If  he  fails  here,  Dr.  Tyudall  argues,  his  case  is  at  once  disproved; 
for  nothing  exists  that  is  not  thus  presentable.  Let  us  compare  this 
with  his  dealing  with  the  fact  of  consciousness.  Consciousness,  he 
admits,  is  not  thus  presentable  ;  and  yet  consciousness,  he  admits, 
exists. 

Instances  might  be  multiplied  of  the  same  vacilliation  and  confusion 
of  thought — the  same  feminine  inability  to  be  constant  to  one  train  of 
reasoning.  But  those  just  given  suffice.  What  weight  can  we  attach 
to  a  man's  philosophy,  who  after  telling  us  that  consciousness  may 
possibly  be  an  inherent  property  of  matter,  of  which  '  the  receit  of 
reason  is  a  limbec  only,'  adds  in  the  same  breath  almost,  that  matter 
generally  is  certainly  not  conscious,  and  that  consciousness  comes  to 
the  brain  we  know  not  whence  nor  wherefore  ?  What  shall  we  say 
of  a  man  who  in  one  sentence  tells  us  that  it  is  impossible  that  science 
can  ever  solve  the  riddle  of  things,  and  tells  us  in  the  next  sentence 
that  it  is  doubtful  if  this  impossibility  will  be  accomplished  within  the 
next  fifty  years  ? — who  argues  that  God  is  a  mystery,  and  therefore  God 
is  a  fiction  ;  who  admits  that  consciousness  is  a  fact,  and  yet  proclaims 
that  it  is  a  mystery  ;  and  who  says  that  the  fact  of  matter  producing 
consciousness  being  a  mystery,  proves  the  mystery  of  consciousness 
acting  on  matter  to  be  a  fact  ? 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.          237 

to  consider  matter  as  ithat  mysterious  something  by 
which  all  that  is  is  accomplished  /'  and  then  to  solve 
the  one  chief  riddle  of  things  by  a  second  mysterious 
something  that  is  not  material.  Nor  can  we  '  reject? 
as  the  positivists  say  they  do,  an  '  outside  builder ' 
of  the  world,  and  then  claim  the  assistance  of  an 
outside  orderer  of  the  brain.  The  positivists  would 
probably  tell  us  that  they  do  not  do  so,  or  that  they 
do  not  mean  to  do  so.  And  we  may  well  believe 
them.  Their  fault  is  that  they  do  not  know  what 
they  mean.  I  will  try  to  show  them. 

First,  they  mean  something,  with  which,  as  I  have 
said  already,  we  may  all  agree.  They  mean  that 
matter  moving  under  certain  laws  (which  may  pos- 
sibly be  part  and  parcel  of  its  own  essence)  combines 
after  many  changes  into  the  human  brain,  every 
motion  of  which  has  its  definite  connection  with  con- 
sciousn.ess,  and  its  definite  correspondence  to  some 
state  of  it.  And  this  fact  is  a  mystery,  though  it  may 
be  questioned  if  it  be  more  mysterious  why  matter 
should  think  of  itself,  than  why  it  should  move  of 
itself.  At  any  rate,  thus  far  we  are  all  agreed  ;  and 
whatever  mystery  we  may  be  dealing  with,  it  is  one 
that  leaves  us  in  ignorance  but  not  in  doubt.  The 
doubt  comes  in  at  the  next  step.  "We  have  then 
not  to  wonder  at  one  fact,  but,  the  mystery  be- 
ing in  either  case  the  same,  to  choose  between  two 
hypotheses.  The  first  is  that  there  is  in  conscious- 


238  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  ? 

ness  one  order  of  forces  only,  the  second  is  that  there 
are  two.  And  when  the  positive  school  say  that  they 
reject  neither  of  these,  what  they  really  mean  to  say 
is  that  as  to  the  second  they  neither  dare  openly  do 
one  thing  or  the  other — to  deny  it  or  accept  it,  but 
that  they  remain  like  an  awkward  child  when  offered 
some  more  pudding,  blushing  and  looking  down,  and 
utterly  unable  to  say  either  yes  or  no. 

Now  the  question  to  ask  the  positive  school  is  this. 
Why  are  they  in  this  state  of  suspense  ?  '  There  is 
an  iron  strength  in  the  logic  J  as  Dr.  Tyndall  himself 
says,  that  rejects  the  second  order  altogether.  The 
hypothesis  of  its  existence  explains  no  fact  of  obser- 
vation. The  scheme  of  nature,  if  it  cannot  be  wholly 
explained  without  it,  can,  at  any  rate,  be  explained 
better  without  it  than  with  it.  Indeed  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  thinker  who  holds  that  all  that  is  is  mat- 
ter, it  seems  a  thing  too  superfluous,  too  unmeaning, 
to  be  even  worth  denial.  And  yet  the  positive  school 
announce  solemnly  that  they  will  not  deny  it.  Now 
why  is  this  ?  It  is  true  that  they  cannot  prove  its 
non-existence  ;  but  this  is  no  reason  for  professing  a 
solemn  uncertainty  as  to  its  existence.  We  cannot 
prove  that  each  time  a  cab  drives  down  Regent  Street 
a  stick  of  barley-sugar  is  not  created  in  Sirius.  But 
we  do  not  proclaim  to  the  world  our  eternal  ignorance 
as  to  whether  or  no  this  is  so.  Why  then  should  our 
positivists  treat  in  this  way  the  alleged  immaterial 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.          239 

part  of  consciousness?  Why  this  emphatic  pro- 
testation on  their  part  that  there  may  exist  a  some- 
thing which,  as  far  as  the  needs  of  their  science  go, 
is  superfluous,  and  as  far  as  the  logic  of  their 
science  goes  is  impossible  \  The  answer  is  plain. 
Though  their  science  does  not  need  it,  the  moral 
value  of  life  does.  As  to  that  value  they  have 
certain  foregone  conclusions,  which  they  cannot  re- 
solve to  abandon,  but  which  their  science  can  make 
no  room  for.  Two  alternatives  are  offered  them — to 
admit  that  life  has  not  the  meaning  they  thought  it 
had,  or  that  their  system  has  not  the  completeness 
they  thought  it  had  ;  and  of  these  two  alternatives 
they  will  accept  neither.  They  could  tell  us  '  with 
an  iron  strength  of  logic'  that  all  human  sorrow 
was  as  involuntary  and  as  unmeaning  as  sea-sickness  ; 
that  love  and  faith  were  but  distillations  of  what 
exists  diluted  in  mutton-chops  and  beer ;  and  that  the 
voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness  was  nothing 
but  an  automatic  metamorphosis  of  the  locusts  and 
wild  honey.  They  could  tell  us  ^icith  an  iron 
strength  of  logic'  that  all  the  thoughts  and  moral 
struggles  of  humanity  were  but  as  the  clanging  whirr 
of  a  machine,  which  if  a  little  better  adjusted  might 
for  the  future  go  on  spinning  in  silence.  But  they 
see  that  the  discovery  on  man's  part  that  his  life 
was  nothing  more  than  this  would  mean  a  complete 
change  in  its  mechanism,  and  that  thenceforward  its 


240  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 


entire  action  would  be  different.  They  therefore 
seek  a  refuge  in  saying  it  may  be  more  than  this. 
But  what  do  they  mean  by  may  be  f  Do  they  mean 
that  in  spite  of  all  that  science  can  teach  them,  in 
spite  of  that  uniformity  absolute  and  omnipresent 
which  alone  it  reveals  to  them,  which  day  by  day  it 
is  forcing  with  more  vividness  on  their  imaginations, 
and  which  seems  to  have  no  room  for  anything  be- 
sides itself — do  they  mean  that  in  spite  of  this  there 
may  still  be  a  second  something,  a  power  of  a  differ- 
ent order,  acting  on  man's  brain  and  grappling  with 
its  automatic  movements  ?  Do  they  mean  that  that 
'  heathen '  and  '  gross '  conception  of  an  immaterial 
soul  is  probably  after  all  the  true  one  ?  Either  they 
must  mean  this  or  else  they  must  mean  the  exact 
opposite.  There  is  no  third  course  open  to  them.1 

1  It  is  true  that  one  of  the  favourite  teachings  of  the  positive  school 
is,  that  as  to  this  question  the  proper  attitude  is  that  of  Agnosticism  ; 
in  other  words,  that  a  state  of  perpetual  suspense  on  this  subject  is 
the  only  rational  one.  They  are  asked,  have  we  a  soul,  a  will,  and 
consequently  any  moral  responsibility?  And  the  answer  is  that  they 
must  shake  their  heads  in  doubt.  It  is  true  they  tell  us  that  it  is  but 
as  men  of  science  that  they  shake  their  heads.  But  Dr.  Tyndall  tells 
us  what  this  admission  means.  '  If  the  materialist  is  confounded,'  he 
says,  'and  science  rendered  dumb,  who  else  is  prepared  with  an  an- 
swer? Let  us  lower  our  heads  and  acknoicledge  our  ignorance,  pritxt 
and  philosopher — one  and  att.'  In  like  manner,  referring  to  the  feeling 
which  others  have  supposed  to  be  a  sense  of  God's  presence  and  maj- 
esty :  this,  for  the  '  man  of  science,'  he  says  is  the  sense  of  a  'power 
which  gives  fulness  and  force  to  his  existence,  Ivt  irldrh  he  can  neither 
analyse  nor  comprehend.'  Which  means,  that  because  a  physical 
specialist  cannot  analyse  this  sense,  it  is  therefore  incapable  of  anal- 
ysis. A  bishop  might  with  equal  propriety  use  just  the  same  lau- 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.          241 

Their  opinion,  as  soon  as  they  form  one,  must  rest 
either  on  this  extreme  or  that.  They  will  see,  as 

guage  about  a  glass  of  port  wine,  and  argue  with  equal  cogency  that 
it  was  a  primary  and  simple  element.  What  is  meant  is,  that  the 
facts  of  the  materialist  are  the  only  facts  we  can  be  certain  of  ;  and 
because  these  can  give  man  no  moral  guidance,  that  therefore  man 
can  have  no  moral  guidance  at  all. 

Let  us  illustrate  the  case  by  some  example  that  is  mentally  pre- 
sentable. Some  ruined  girl,  we  will  say,  oppressed  with  a  sense  of 
degradation,  comes  to  Dr.  Tyndall  and  lays  her  case  before  him.  '  1 
have  heard  you  are  a  very  icise  man,'  she  says  to  him,  '  and  that  you 
have  proved  that  the  priest  is  all  wrong,  wJio  prepared  me  a  year  ago  for 
my  confirmation.  Now  tell  me,  I  beseech  you  tell  me,  is  mine  really 
the  desperate  state  I  have  been  taught  to  think  it  isf  May  my  body  be 
likened  to  tfte  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost  defiled  ?  or  do  I  owe  it  no  more 
reverence  than  I  owe  the  Alhambra  Theatre  f  Am  I  guilty,  and  must  I 
seek  repentance?  or  am  I  not  guilty,  and  may  I  go  on  just  as  I  please  f ' 
'My  dear  girl,'  Dr.  Tyndall  replies  to  her,  'I  must  shake  my  head  in 
doubt.  Come,  let  us  lower  our  lieads,  and  acknowledge  our  ignorance  as 
to  whctltcr  you  are  a  wretched  girl  or  no.  Materialism  is  confounded, 
and  science  rendered  dumb  by  questions  such  as  yours;  they  can,  there- 
fore, never  be  answered,  and  must  always  remain  open.  I  may  add, 
however,  that  if  you  ask  me  personally  whether  I  consider  you  to  be  de- 
graded, I  lean  to  the  affirmative.  But  I  can  give  you  no  reason  in  sup- 
port of  this  judgment,  so  you  may  attacJi,  to  it  what  value  you  wiM.' 

Such  is  the  position  of  agnostics,  when  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  world.  They  are  undecided  only  about  one  question,  and  this  is 
the  one  question  which  cannot  be  left  undecided.  Men  cannot  remain 
agnostics  as  to  belief  that  their  actions  must  depend  upon,  any  more 
than  a  man  who  is  compelled  to  go  on  walking  can  refrain  from  choos- 
ing one  road  or  other  when  there  are  two  open  to  him.  Nor  does  it 
matter  that  our  believing  may  in  neither  case  amount  to  a  complete 
certitude.  It  is  sufficient  that  the  balance  of  probability  be  on  one 
side  or  the  other.  Two  ounces  will  out-weigh  one  ounce,  quite  as 
surely  as  a  ton  will.  But  what  our  philosophers  profess  to  teach  us 
(in  so  far  as  they  profess  to  be  agnostics,  and  disclaim  being  dogma- 
tists) is,  that  there  is  no  balance  either  way.  The  message  they  shout 
to  us  is,  that  they  have  no  message  at  all ;  and  that  because  they  are 
without  one,  the  whole  world  is  in  the  same  condition. 
16 


242  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

exact  and  scientific  thinkers,  that  if  it  be  not  practi- 
cally certain  that  there  is  some  supernatural  entity 
in  us,  it  is  practically  certain  that  there  is  not  one. 
To  say  merely  that  it  may  exist  is  but  to  put  an 
ounce  in  one  scale  whilst  there  is  a  ton  in  the  other. 
It  is  an  admission  that  is  utterly  dead  and  meaning- 
less. They  can  only  entertain  the  question  of  its 
existence  because  its  existence  is  essential  to  man  as 
a  moral  being.  The  only  reason  that  can  tempt  us 
to  say  it  may  be  forces  us  in  the  same  moment  to 
say  that  it  must  be,  and  that  it  is. 

"Which  answer  eventually  the  positive  school  will 
choose,  and  which  answer  men  in  general  will  ac- 
cept, I  make  as  I  have  said  before,  no  attempt  to  an- 
swer. My  only  purpose  to  show  is,  that  if  man  has 
any  moral  being  at  all,  he  has  it  in  virtue  of  his  im- 
material will — a  force,  a  something  of  which  physical 
science  can  give  no  account  whatever,  and  which  it 
has  no  shadow  of  authority  either  for  affirming  or 
for  denying ;  and  further,  that  if  we  are  not  prevented 
by  it  from  affirming  his  immaterial  will,  we  are  not 
prevented  from  affirming  his  immortality,  and  the 
existence  of  God  likewise. 

And  now  I  come  to  that  third  point  which  I  said  I 
should  deal  with  here,  but  which  I  have  not  yet 
touched  upon.  Every  logical  reasoner  who  admits 
the  power  of  will  must  admit  not  only  the  possibility 
of  miracles,  but  also  the  actual  fact  of  their  daily 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.         243 

and  hourly  occurrence.  Every  exertion  of  the  human 
will  is  a  miracle  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  word ; 
only  it  takes  place  privately,  within  the  closed  walls 
of  the  brain.  The  molecules  of  the  brain  are  arranged 
and  ordered  by  a  supernatural  agency.  Their  natu- 
ral automatic  movements  are  suspended,  or  directed 
and  interfered  with.  It  is  true  that  in  common 
usage  the  word  miracle  has  a  more  restricted  sense. 
It  is  applied  generally  not  to  the  action  of  man's 
will,  but  of  God's.  But  the  sense  in  both  cases  is 
essentially  the  same.  God's  will  is  conceived  of  as 
disturbing  the  automatic  movements  of  matter  with- 
out the  skull,  in  just  the  same  way  as  man's  will  is 
conceived  of  as  disturbing  those  of  the  brain  within 
it.  Nor,  though  the  alleged  manifestations  of  the 
former  do  more  violence  to  the  scientific  imagination 
than  do  those  of  the  latter,  are  they  in  the  eye  of 
reason  one  whit  more  impossible.  The  erection  of  a 
pyramid  at  the  will  of  an  Egyptian  king  would  as 
much  disturb  the  course  of  nature  as  the  removal  of  a 
mountain  by  the  faith  of  a  Galilean  fisherman  ;  whilst 
the  flooding  of  the  Sahara  at  the  will  of  a  speculating 
company  would  interfere  with  the  weather  of  Europe 
far  more  than  the  most  believing  of  men  ever  thought 
that  any  answer  to  prayer  would. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  morality  and  religion  are, 
so  far  as  science  goes,  on  one  and  the  same  footing — 
of  one  and  the  same  substance,  and  that  as  assaile.d 


244  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

by  science  they  either  fall  together  or  stand  together. 
It  will  be  seen  too  that  the  power  of  science  against 
them  resides  not  in  itself,  but  in  a  certain  intellec- 
tual fulcrum  that  we  ourselves  supply  it  with.  That 
its  methods  can  discover  no  trace  of  either  of  them, 
of  itself  proves  nothing,  unless  we  first  lay  down  as 
a  dogma  that  its  methods  of  discovery  are  the  only 
methods.  If  we  are  prepared  to  abide  by  this,  there 
is  little  more  to  be  said.  The  rest,  it  is  becoming 
daily  plainer,  is  a  very  simple  process  ;  and  what  we 
have  to  urge  against  religion  will  thenceforth  amount 
to  this.  There  is  no  supernatural,  because  everything 
is  natural ;  there  is  no  spirit,  because  everything  is 
matter ;  or  there  is  no  air,  because  everything  is 
earth  ;  there  is  no  fire,  because  everything  is  water ; 
a  rose  has  no  smell  because  our  eyes  cannot  detect 
any. 

This,  in  its  simplest  form,  is  the  so-called  argument 
of  modern  materialism.  Argument,  however,  it  is 
quite  plain  it  is  not.  It  is  a  mere  dogmatic  state- 
ment, that  can  give  no  logical  account  of  itself,  and 
must  trust,  for  its  acceptance,  to  the  world' s  vague 
sense  of  its  fitness.  The  modern  world,  it  is  true,  has 
mistaken  it  for  an  argument,  and  has  been  cowed  by 
it  accordingly  ;  but  the  mistake  is  a  simple  one,  and 
can  be  readily  accounted  for.  The  dogmatism  of  de- 
nial was  formerly  a  sort  of  crude  rebellion,  inconsist- 
ent with  itself,  and  vulnerable  in  a  thousand  places. 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCIENTIFIC  NEGATION.         245 

Nature,  as  then  known,  was,  to  all  who  could  weigh 
the  wonder  of  it,  a  thing  inexplicable  without  some 
supernatural  agency.  Indeed,  marks  of  such  an 
agency  seemed  to  meet  men  everywhere.  But  now 
all  this  has  changed.  Step  by  step  science  has  been 
unravelling  the  tangle,  and  has  loosened  with  its  hu- 
man fingers  the  knots  that  once  seemed  deo  digni 
vindice.  It  has  enabled  us  to  see  in  nature  a  com- 
plete machine,  needing  no  aid  from  without.  It  has 
made  a  conception  of  things  rational  and  coherent 
that  was  formerly  absurd  and  arbitrary.  Science 
has  done  all  this  ;  but  this  is  all  that  it  has  done. 
The  dogmatism  of  denial  it  has  left  as  it  found  it,  an 
unverified  and  unverifiable  assertion.  It  has  simply 
made  this  dogmatism  consistent  with  itself.  But  in 
doing  this,  as  men  will  soon  come  to  see,  it  has  done 
a  great  deal  more  than  its  chief  masters  bargained 
for.  Nature,  as  explained  by  science,  is  nothing 
more  than  a  vast  automaton ;  and  man  with  all  his 
ways  and  works  is  simply  a  part  of  Nature,  and  can, 
by  no  device  of  thought,  be  detached  from  or  set 
above  it.  He  is  as  absolutely  automatic  as  a  tree  is, 
or  as  a  flower  is;  and  is  an  incapable  as  a  tree  or 
flower  of  any  spiritual  responsibility  or  significance. 
Here  we  see  the  real  limits  of  science.  It  will  ex- 
plain the  facts  of  life  to  us,  it  is  true,  but  it  will  not 
explain  the  value  that  hitherto  we  have  attached  to 
them.  Is  that  solemn  value  a  fact  or  fancy?  As 


246  IB  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

far  as  proof  and  reason  go,  we  can  answer  either 
way.  We  have  two  simple  and  opposite  statements 
set  against  each  other,  between  which  argument  will 
give  us  no  help  in  choosing,  and  between  which 
the  only  arbiter  is  a  judgment  formed  upon  utterly 
alien  grounds.  As  for  proof,  the  nature  of  the  case 
does  not  admit  of  it.  The  world  of  moral  facts,  if  it 
existed  a  thousand  times,  could  give  no  more  proof 
of  its  existence  than  it  does  now.  If  on  other  grounds 
we  believe  that  it  does  exist,  then  signs,  if  not  proofs 
of  it,  at  once  surround  us  everywhere.  But  let  the 
belief  in  its  reality  fail  us,  and  instantly  the  whole 
cloud  of  witnesses  vanishes.  For  science  to  demand 
a  proof  that  shall  convince  it  on  its  own  premisses  is 
to  demand  an  impossibility,  and  to  involve  a  contra- 
diction in  terms.  Science  is  only  possible  on  the  as- 
sumption that  nature  is  uniform.  Morality  is  only 
possible  on  the  assumption  that  this  uniformity  is 
interfered  with  by  the  will.  The  world  of  morals  is 
as  distinct  from  the  world  of  science  as  a  wine  is  from 
the  cup  that  holds  it ;  and  to  say  that  it  does  not 
exist  because  science  can  find  no  trace  of  it,  is  to  say 
that  a  bird  has  not  flown  over  a  desert  because  it  has 
left  no  footprints  in  the  sand.  And  as  with  morals, 
so  it  is  with  religion.  Science  will  allow  us  to  deny 
or  to  affirm  both.  Reason  will  not  allow  us  to  deny 
or  affirm  only  one. 


CHAPTER  .X. 

MOEALITY   AND   NATURAL   THEISM. 

Credo  quia  impossibile  est. 

IF  we  look  calmly  at  the  possible  future  of  human 
thought,  it  will  appear  from  what  we  have  just  seen, 
that  physical  science  of  itself  can  do  little  to  control 
or  cramp  it ;  nor  until  man  consents  to  resign  his 
belief  in  virtue  and  his  own  dignity  altogether,  will 
it  be  able  to  repress  religious  faith,  should  other 
causes  tend  to  produce  a  new  outbreak  of  it.  But 
the  chief  difficulties  in  the  matter  are  still  in  store 
for  us.  Let  us  see  never  so  clearly  that  science,  if 
we  are  moral  beings,  can  do  nothing  to  weaken  our 
belief  in  God  and  immortality,  but  still  leaves  us 
free,  if  we  will,  to  believe  in  them,  it  seems  getting 
clearer  and  yet  more  clear  that  these  beliefs  are  in- 
consistent with  themselves,  and  conflict  with  these 
very  moral  feelings,  of  which  they  are  invoked  as  an 
explanation.  Here  it  is  true  that  reason  does  con- 
front us,  and  what  answer  to  make  to  it  is  a  very 
serious  question.  This  applies  even  to  natural  re- 
ligion in  its  haziest  and  most  compliant  form ;  and 
as  applied  to  any  form  of  orthodoxy  its  force  is 
doubled.  What  we  have  seen  thus  far  is,  that  if 

247 


248  &  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

there  be  a  moral  world  at  all,  our  knowledge  of  na- 
ture contains  nothing  inconsistent  with  theism.  We 
have  now  to  enquire  how  far  theism  is  inconsistent 
with  our  conceptions  of  the  moral  world. 

In  treating  these  difficulties,  we  will  for  the  present 
consider  them  as  applying  only  to  religion  in  general, 
not  to  any  special  form  of  it.  The  position  of  ortho- 
doxy we  will  reserve  for  a  separate  treatment.  For 
convenience'  sake,  however,  I  shall  take  as  a  symbol 
of  all  religion  the  vaguer  and  more  general  teachings 
of  Christianity  ;  but  I  shall  be  adducing  them  not  as 
teachings  revealed  by  heaven,  but  simply  as  devel- 
oped by  the  religious  consciousness  of  men. 

To  begin  then  with  the  great  primary  difficulties : 
these,  though  they  take  various  forms,  can  all  in  the 
last  resort  be  reduced  to  two — the  existence  of  evil 
in  the  face  of  the  power  of  God,  and  the  freedom  of 
man's  will  in  the  face  of  the  will  of  God.  And  what 
I  shall  try  to  make  plain  with  respect  to  these  is 
this :  not  that  they  are  not  difficulties — not  that  they 
are  not  insoluble  difficulties  ;  but  that  they  are  not 
difficulties  due  to  religion  or  theism,  nor  by  aban- 
doning theism  can  we  in  any  way  escape  from  them. 
They  start  into  being  not  with  the  belief  in  God,  and 
a  future  of  rewards  and  punishments,  but  with  the 
belief  in  the  moral  law  and  in  virtue,  and  they  are 
common  to  all  systems  in  which  the  worth  of  virtue 
is  recognised. 


MORALITY  AND  NATURAL   THEISM.  249 

The  vulgar  view  of  the  matter  cannot  be  better 
stated  than  in  the  following  account  given  by  J.  S. 
Mill  of  the  anti-religious  reasonings  of  his  father. 
He  looked  upon  religion,  says  his  son,  '  as  the  great- 
est enemy  of  morality  ;  first,  ~by  setting  up  fictitious 
excellences — belief  in  creeds,  devotional  feelings,  and 
ceremonies,  not  connected  with  the  good  of  human- 
kind, and  causing  them  to  ~be  accepted  as  substitutes 
for  genuine  virtues  /  but  above  all  by  radically 
vitiating  the  standard  of  morals,  making  it  consist 
in  doing  the  will  of  a  being,  on  whom,  indeed,  it 
lavishes  all  the  phrases  of  adulation,  but  whom,  in 
sober  truth,  it  depicts  as  eminently  hateful.  I  have 
a  hundred  times  heard  him  say  that  all  ages  and 
nations  have  represented  their  gods  as  wicked  in  a, 
constantly  increasing  progression ;  that  mankind 
had  gone  on  adding  trait  after  trait,  till  they  reached 
the  most  perfect  expression  of  wickedness  which  the 
human  mind  can  devise,  and  have  called  this  God, 
and  prostrated  themselves  before  it.  The  ne  plus 
ultra  of  wickedness  he  considered  to  be  embodied  in 
what  is  commonly  presented  to  mankind  as  the  creed 
of  Christianity.  Think  (he  used  to  say)  of  a  being 
who  would  make  a  hell — who  would  create  the  human 
race  with  the  infallible  foreknowledge,  and  therefore 
ir  nit  the  intention,  that  the  great  majority  of  them 
should  be  consigned  to  horrible  and  everlasting  tor- 
ment.'' James  Mill,  adds  his  son,  knew  quite  well 


250  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

that  Christians  were  not,  in  fact,  as  demoralized  by 
this  monstrous  creed  as,  if  they  were  logically  con- 
sistent, they  ought  to  be.  '  The  same  slovenliness 
of  thought  (he  said}  and  subjection  of  the  reason  to 
fears,  wishes,  and  affections,  which  enable  them  to 
accept  a  theory  involving  a  contradiction  in  terms, 
prevent  them  from  perceiving  the  logical  consequence 
of  the  tJieory.1 

Now,  in  spite  of  its  coarse  and  exaggerated  acri- 
mony, this  passage  doubtless  expresses  a  great  truth, 
which  presently  I  shall  go  on  to  consider.  But  it 
contains  also  a  very  characteristic  falsehood,  of 
which  we  must  first  divest  it.  God  is  here  repre- 
sented as  making  a  hell,  with  the  express  intention 
of  forcibly  putting  men  into  it,  and  His  main  hate- 
fulness  consists  in  this  capricious  and  wanton  cru- 
elty. Such  a  representation  is,  however,  an  essen- 
tially false  one.  It  is  not  only  not  true  to  the  true 
Christian  teaching,  but  it  is  absolutely  opposed  to  it. 
The  God  of  Christianity  does  not  make  hell ;  still 
less  does  He  deliberately  put  men  into  it.  It  is 
made  by  men  themselves  ;  the  essence  of  its  torment 
consists  in  the  loss  of  God ;  and  those  that  lose  Him, 
lose  Him  by  their  own  act,  from  having  deliberately 
made  themselves  incapable  of  loving  Him.  God 
never  wills  the  death  of  the  sinner.  It  is  to  the 
sinner's  own  will  that  the  sinner's  death  is  due. 

All  this  rhetoric,  therefore,  about  God's  malevo- 


MORALITY  AND  NATURAL   THEISM.  251 

lence  and  wickedness  is  entirely  beside  the  point, 
nor  does  it  even  touch  the  difficulty  that,  in  his 
heart,  James  Mill  is  aiming  at.  His  main  difficulty 
is  nothing  more  than  this  :  How  can  an  infinite  will 
that  rules  everywhere,  find  room  for  a  finite  will  not 
in  harmony  with  itself?  Whilst  the  only  farther 
perplexity  that  the  passage  indicates,  is  the  exist- 
ence of  those  evil  conditions  by  which  the  finite 
will,  already  so  weak  and  wavering,  is  yet  farther 
hampered. 

Now  these  difficulties  are  doubtless  quite  as  great 
as  James  Mill  thought  they  were  ;  but  we  must  ob- 
serve this,  that  they  are  riot  of  the  same  kind.  They 
are  merely  intellectual  difficulties.  They  are  not 
moral  difficulties  at  all.  Mill  truly  says  that  they 
involve  a  contradiction  in  terms.  But  why  ?  Not, 
as  Mill  says,  because  a  wicked  God  is  set  up  as  the 
object  of  moral  worship,  but  because,  in  spite  of  all 
the  wickedness  existing,  the  Author  of  all  existences 
is  affirmed  not  to  be  wicked. 

Nor,  again,  is  Mill  right  in  saying  that  this  contra- 
diction is  due  to  '  slovenliness  of  thought.'  Theol- 
ogy accepts  it  with  its  eyes  wide  open,  making  no 
attempt  to  explain  the  inexplicable  ;  and  the  human 
will  it  treats  in  the  same  way.  It  makes  no  offer  to 
us  to  clear  up  everything,  or  to  enable  thought  to 
put  a  girdle  round  the  universe.  On  the  contrary, 
it  proclaims  with  emphasis  that  its  first  axioms  are 


252  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

unthinkable ;    and  its  most  renowned  philosophic 
motto  is,  '  I  believe  because  it  is  impossible  S 

What  shall  it  say,  then,  when  assailed  by  the  ra- 
tional moralist  ?  It  will  not  deny  its  own  condition, 
but  it  will  show  its  opponent  that  his  is  really  the 
same.  It  will  show  him  that,  let  him  give  his  moral- 
ity what  base  he  will,  he  cannot  conceive  of  things 
without  the  same  contradiction  in  terms.  If  good  be 
a  thing  of  any  spiritual  value — if  it  be,  in  other 
words,  what  every  moral  system  supposes  it  to  be — 
that  good  can  co-exist  with  evil  is  just  as  unthinka- 
ble as  that  God  can.  The  value  of  moral  good  is 
supposed  to  lie  in  this — tha't  by  it  we  are  put  en  rap- 
port with  something  that  is  better  than  ourselves— 
some  '  stream  of  tendency, "*  let  us  say,  'tJiat  makes 
for  righteousness ,'  But  if  this  stream  of  tendency  be 
not  a  personal  God,  what  is  it  ?  Is  it  Nature  ?  Na- 
ture, we  have  seen  already,  is  open  to  just  the  same 
objections  that  God  is.  It  is  equally  guilty  of  all 
the  evil  that  is  contained  in  it.  Is  it  Truth,  then- 
pure  Truth  for  its  own  sake  ?  Again,  we  have  seen 
already  that  as  little  can  it  be  that.  Is  it  Human 
Nature  as  opposed  to  Nature? — Man  as  distinct 
from,  and  holier  than,  any  individual  men  ?  Of  all 
the  substitutes  for  God  this  at  first  sight  seems  the 
most  promising,  or,  at  any  rate,  the  most  practical. 
But,  apart  from  all  the  other  objections  to  this,  which 
we  have  already  been  considering  in  such  detail,  it 


MORALITY  AND  NATURAL   THEISM.  253 

will  very  soon  be  apparent  that  it  involves  the  very- 
same  inconsistency,  the  same  contradiction  in  terms. 
The  fact  of  moral  evil  still  confronts  us,  and  the  hu- 
manity to  which  we  lift  our  hearts  up  is  still  taxable 
with  that.  But  perhaps  we  separate  the  good  in 
humanity  from  the  evil,  and  only  worship  the  former 
as  struggling  to  get  free  from  the  latter.  This,  how- 
ever, will  be  of  little  help  to  us.  If  what  we  call 
humanity  is  nothing  but  the  good  part  of  it,  we  can 
only  vindicate  its  goodness  at  the  expense  of  its 
strength.  Evil  is  at  least  an  equal  match  for  it,  and 
in  most  of  the  battles  hitherto  it  is  evil  that  has 
been  victorious.  But  to  conceive  of  good  in  this 
way  is  really  to  destroy  our  conception  of  it.  Good- 
ness is  in  itself  an  incomplete  notion  ;  it  is  but  one 
facet  of  a  figure  which,  approached  from  other  sides, 
appears  to  us  as  eternity,  as  omnipresence,  and,  above 
all,  as  supreme  strength  ;  and  to  reduce  goodness  to 
nothing  but  the  higher  part  of  humanity — to  make 
it  a  wavering  fitful  flame  that  continually  sinks  and 
flickers,  that  at  its  best  can  but  blaze  for  a  while, 
and  at  its  brightest  can  throw  no  light  beyond  this 
paltry  parish  of  a  world — is  to  deprive  it  of  its  whole 
meaning  and  hold  on  us.  Or  again,  even  were  this 
not  so,  and  could  we  believe,  and  be  strengthened  by 
believing,  that  the  good  in  humanity  would  one  day 
gain  the  victory,  and  that  some  higher  future,  which 
even  we  might  partake  in  by  preparing,  was  in  store 


254  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

for  the  human  race,  would  our  conception  of  the 
matter  then  be  any  more  harmonious  ?  As  we  sur- 
veyed our  race  as  a  whole,  would  its  brighter  future 
ever  do  away  with  its  past  ?  Would  not  the  depth 
and  the  darkness  of  the  shadow  grow  more  portent- 
ous as  the  light  grew  brighter  ?  And  would  not 
man's  history  strike  more  clearly  on  us  as  the  ghast- 
ly embodiment  of  a  vast  injustice  ?  But  it  may  be 
said  that  the  sorrows  of  the  past  will  hereafter  be 
dead  and  done  with  ;  that  evil  will  literally  be  as 
though  it  had  never  been.  Well,  and  so  in  a  short 
time  will  the  good  likewise  ;  and  if  we  are  ever  to 
think  lightly  of  the  world's  sinful  and  sorrowful 
past,  we  shall  have  to  think  equally  lightly  of  its 
sinless  and  cheerful  future. 

Let  us  pass  now  to  the  secondary  points.  Opponents 
of  theism,  or  of  religion  in  general,  are  perpetually 
attacking  it  for  its  theories  of  a  future  life.  Its 
eternal  rewards  and  punishments  are  to  them  perma- 
nent stumbling-blocks.  A  future  life  of  happiness 
they  think  an  unmeaning  promise  ;  and  a  future  life 
of  misery  they  think  an  unworthy  and  brutal  threat. 
And  if  reason  and  observation  are  to  be  our  only 
guides,  we  cannot  say  that  they  do  not  argue  with 
justice.  If  we  believe  in  heaven,  we  believe  in  some- 
thing that  the  imagination  fails  to  grasp.  If  we  be- 
lieve in  hell,  we  believe  in  something  that  our  moral 
sense  revolts  at :  for  though  hell  may  be  nothing 


MORALITY  AND  NATURAL   THEISM.  255 

but  the  conscious  loss  of  God,  and  though  those 
that  lose  Him  may  have  made  their  own  hell  for 
themselves,  still  their  loss,  if  eternal,  will  be  an 
eternal  flaw  and  disease  in  the  sum  of  things — the 
eternal  self-assertion  against  omnipotence  of  some 
depraved  and  alien  power. 

From  these  difficulties  it  is  impossible  to  escape. 
All  we  can  do  here,  as  in  the  former  case,  is  to  show 
that  they  are  not  peculiar  to  the  special  doctrines 
to  which  they  are  supposed  generally  to  be  due  ; 
but  that  they  are  equally  inseparable  from  any  of 
the  proposed  substitutes.  We  can  only  show  that 
they  are  inevitable,  not  that  they  are  not  insolu- 
ble. If  we  condemn  a  belief  in  heaven  because  it  is 
unthinkable,  we  must  for  the  same  reason,  as  we 
have  seen  already,  condemn  a  Utopia  on  earth — the 
thing  we  are  now  told  we  should  fix  our  hopes 
upon,  instead  of  it.  As  to  the  second  question — 
that  of  eternal  punishment,  we  may  certainly  here 
get  rid  of  one  difficulty  by  adopting  the  doctrine  of 
a  final  restitution.  But,  though  one  difficulty  will 
be  thus  got  rid  of,  another  equally  great  will  take 
its  place.  Our  moral  sense,  it  is  true,  will  no  more 
be  shocked  by  the  conception  of  an  eternal  discord 
in  things,  but  we  shall  be  confronted  by  a  fatalism 
that  will  allow  to  us  no  moral  being  at  all.  If  we 
shall  all  reach  the  same  place  in  the  end — if  inevita- 
bly we  shall  all  do  so — it  is  quite  plain  that  our  free- 


256  *8  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

dom  to  choose  in  the  matter  is  a  freedom  that  is  ap- 
parent only.  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen,  it  seems,  sees  this 
clearly  enough.  Once  give  morality  its  spiritual 
and  supernatural  meaning,  and  there  is,  he  holds, 
'  some  underlying  logical  necessity  which  binds  [a 
belief  in  hell]  indissolubly  with  the  primary  articles 
of  the  faith?  Such  a  system  of  retribution,  he  adds, 
is  '•created  spontaneously"*  by  the  ' conscience. 
1  Heaven  and  hell  are  corollaries  that  rise  and  fall 
together.  .  .  .  Whatever  the  meaning  of  ai&vios, 
the  fearful  emotion  which  is  symbolised,  is  eternal 
or  independent  of  time,  by  the  same  right  as  the 
ecstatic  emotion?  He  sees  this  clearly  enough  ;  but 
the  strange  thing  is  that  he  does  not  see  the  con- 
verse. He  sees  that  the  Christian  conception  of 
morality  necessitates  the  affirmation  of  hell.  He 
does  not  see  that  the  denial  of  hell  is  the  denial  of 
Christian  morality,  and  that  in  calling  the  former 
a  dream,  as  he  does,  he  does  not  call  the  latter  a 
dream  likewise. 

We  can  close^  our  eyes  to  none  of  these  perplexi- 
ties. The  only  way  to  resist  their  power  is  not  to 
ignore  them,  but  to  realise  to  the  full  their  magni- 
tude, and  to  see  how,  if  we  let  them  take  away  from 
us  anything,  they  will  in  another  moment  take 
everything  ;  to  see  that  we  must  either  set  our  foot 
upon  their  necks,  or  that  they  will  set  their  feet  on 
ours ;  to  see  that  we  can  look  them  down,  but  that 


MORALITY  AND  NATURAL   THEISM.  257 

we  can  never  look  them  through  ;  to  see  that  we  can 
make  them  impotent  if  we  will,  but  that  if  they  are 
not  impotent  they  will  be  omnipotent. 

But  the  strongest  example  of  this  is  yet  to  come  : 
and  this  is  not  any  special  belief  either  as  to  religion 
or  morals,  but  a  belief  underlying  both  of  these,  and 
without  which  neither  of  them  were  possible.  It  is 
a  belief  which  from  one  point  of  view  we  have  al- 
ready touched  upon — the  belief  in  the  freedom  of 
the  will.  But  we  have  as  yet  only  considered  it  in 
relation  to  physical  science.  What  we  have  now  to 
do  is  to  consider  it  in  relation  to  itself. 

What,  then,  let  us  ask,  is  the  nature  of  the  be- 
lief ?  To  a  certain  extent  the  answer  is  very  easy. 
When  we  speak  and  think  of  free-will  ordinarily, 
we  know  quite  well  what  we  mean  by  it ;  and  we 
one  and  all  of  us  mean  exactly  the  same  thing.  It  is 
true  that  when  professors  speak  upon  this  question, 
they  make  countless  efforts  to  distinguish  between 
the  meaning  which  they  attach  to  the  belief,  and  the 
meaning-  which  the  world  attaches  to  it.  And  it  is 
possible  that  in  their  studies  or  their  lecture-rooms 
they  may  contrive  for  the  time  being  to  distort  or  to 
confuse  for  themselves  the  common  view  of  the  matter. 
But  let  the  professor  once  forget  his  theories,  and  be 
forced  to  buffet  against  his  life's  importunate  and 
stern  realities  :  let  him  quarrel  with  his  housekeeper 
because  she  has  mislaid  his  spectacles,  or  his  night- 
17 


258  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

cap,  or,  preoccupied  with  her  bible,  has  not  mixed 
his  gruel  properly ;  and  his  conception  of  free-will 
will  revert  in  an  instant  to  the  universal  type,  and 
the  good  woman  will  discern  only  too  plainly  that 
her  master's  convictions  as  to  it  are  precisely  the 
same  things  as  her  own.  Everywhere,  indeed,  in 
all  the  life  that  surrounds  us — in  the  social  and 
moral  judgments  on  which  the  fabric  of  society  has 
reared  itself,  in  the  personal  judgments  on  which  so 
much  depends  in  friendship  and  antipathies — every- 
where, in  conduct,  in  emotion,  in  art,  in  language, 
and  in  law,  we  see  man's  common  belief  in  will 
written,  broad,  and  plain,  and  clear.  There  is,  per- 
haps, no  belief  to  which,  for  practical  purposes,  he 
attaches  so  important  and  so  plain  a  meaning. 

Such  is  free-will  when  looked  at  from  a  distance. 
But  let  us  look  at  it  more  closely,  and  see  what 
happens  then.  The  result  is  strange.  Like  a  path 
seen  at  dusk  across  a  moorland,  plain  and  visible 
from  a  distance,  but  fading  gradually  from  us  the 
more  near  we  draw  to  it,  so  does  the  belief  in  free- 
will fade  before  the  near  inspection  of  reason.  It  at 
first  grows  hazy ;  at  last  it  becomes  indistinguish- 
able. At  first  we  begin  to  be  uncertain  of  what  we 
mean  by  it ;  at  last  we  find  ourselves  certain  that  so 
far  as  we  trust  to  reason,  we  cannot  possibly  have 
any  meaning  at  all.  Examined  in  this  way,  every 
act  of  our  lives — all  our  choices  and  refusals,  seem 


MORALITY  AND  NATURAL   THEISM:.  359 

nothing  but  the  necessary  outcome  of  things  that 
have  gone  before.  It  is  true  that  between  some 
actions  the  choice  hangs  at  times  so  evenly,  that  our 
will  may  seem  the  one  thing  that  at  last  turns  the 
balance.  But  let  us  analyse  the  matter  a  little  more 
carefully,  and  \ve  shall  see  that  there  are  a  thousand 
microscopic  motives,  too  small  for  us  to  be  entirely 
conscious  of,  which,  according  to  how  they  settle  on 
us,  will  really  decide  the  question.  Nor  shall  we 
see  only  that  this  is  so.  Let  us  go  a  little  further, 
and  reason  will  tell  us  that  it  must  be  so.  Were 
this  not  the  case,  there  would  have  been  an  escape 
left  for  us.  Though  admitting  that  what  controlled 
our  actions  could  be  nothing  but  the  strongest  mo- 
tive, it  might  yet  be  contended  that  the  will  could 
intensify  any  motive  it  chose,  and  that  thus  motives 
really  were  only  tools  in  its  hands.  But  this  does 
but  postpone  the  difficulty,  not  solve  it.  "What  is 
this  free-will  when  it  comes  to  use  its  tools  \  It  is  a 
something,  we  shall  find,  that  our  minds  cannot  give 
harbour  to.  It  is  a  thing  contrary  to  every  analogy 
of  nature.  It  is  a  thing  which  is  forever  causing, 
but  which  is  in  itself  uncaused. 

To  escape  from  this  difficulty  is  altogether  hope- 
less. Age  after  age  has  tried  to  do  so,  but  tried  in 
vain.  There  have  been  always  metaphysical  experts 
ready  to  engage  to  make  free-will  a  something  intel- 
lectually conceivable.  But  they  all  either  leave  the 


260  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

question  where  they  found  it,  or  else  they  only  seem 
to  explain  it,  by  denying  covertly  the  fact  that 
really  wants  explaining. 

Such  is  free-will  when  examined  by  the  natural 
reason — a  thing  that  melts  away  inevitably  first  to 
haze,  and  then  to  utter  nothingness.  And  for  a  time 
we  feel  convinced  that  it  really  is  nothing.  Let 
us,  however,  again  retire  from  it  to  the  common 
distance,  and  the  phantom  we  thought  exorcised  is 
again  back  in  an  instant.  There  is  the  sphinx  once 
more,  distinct  and  clear  as  ever,  holding  in  its  hand 
the  scales  of  good  and  evil,  and  demanding  a  curse 
or  a  blessing  for  every  human  action.  We  are  once 
more  certain — more  certain  of  this  than  anything — 
that  we  are,  as  we  always  thought  we  were,  free 
agents,  free  to  choose,  and  free  to  refuse  ;  and  that  in 
virtue  of  this  freedom,  and  in  virtue  of  this  alone, 
we  are  responsible  for  what  we  do  and  are. 

Let  us  consider  this  point  well.  Let  us  consider 
first  how  free-will  is  a  moral  necessity  ;  next  how  it 
is  an  intellectual  impossibility ;  and  lastly  how, 
though  it  be  impossible,  we  yet,  in  defiance  of  in- 
tellect, continue,  as  moral  beings,  to  believe  in  it. 
Let  us  but  once  realise  that  we  do  this,  that  all  man- 
kind universally  do  this  and  have  done — and  the 
difficulties  offered  us  by  theism  will  no  longer  stag- 
ger us.  We  shall  be  prepared  for  them,  prepared 
not  to  drive  them  away,  but  to  endure  their  presence. 


MORALITY  AND  NATURAL   THEISM. 

If  in  spite  of  my  reason  I  can  believe  that  my  will  is 
free,  in  spite  of  my  reason  I  can  believe  that  God  is 
good.  The  latter  belief  is  not  nearly  so  hard  as  the 
former.  The  greatest  stumbling-block  in  the  moral 
world  lies  in  the  threshold  by  which  to  enter  it. 

Such  then  are  the  moral  difficulties,  properly  so 
called,  that  beset  theism  ;  but  there  are  certain 
others  of  a  vaguer  nature,  that  we  must  glance  at 
likewise.  It  is  somewhat  hard  to  know  how  to 
classify  these  ;  but  it  will  be  correct  enough  to  say 
that  whereas  those  we  have  just  dealt  with  appeal  to 
the  moral  intellect,  the  ones  we  are  to  deal  with  now 
appeal  to  the  moral  imagination.  The  facts  that 
these  depend  on,  and  which  are  practically  new  dis- 
coveries for  the  modern  world,  are  the  insignificance 
of  the  earth,  when  compared  with  the  universe,  of 
which  it  is  visibly  and  demonstrably  an  integral  but 
insignificant  fragment ;  the  enormous  period  of  his 
existence  for  which  man  has  had  no  religious  his- 
tory, and  has  been,  so  far  as  we  can  tell,  not  a  reli- 
gious being  at  all ;  and  the  vast  majority  of  the  race 
that  are  still  stagnant  and  semi-barbarous.  Is  it 
possible,  we  ask,  that  a  God,  with  so  many  stars  to 
attend  to,  should  busy  himself  with  this  paltry 
earth,  and  make  it  the  scene  of  events  more  stupen- 
dous than  the  courses  of  countless  systems  ?  Is  it 
possible  that  of  the  swarms,  vicious  and  aimless, 
that  breed  upon  it,  each  individual— Bushman, 


262  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

Chinaman,  or  Negro — is  a  precious  immortal  being, 
with  a  birthright  in  infinity  and  eternity  ?  The  effect 
of  these  considerations  is  sometimes  overwhelming. 
Astronomy  oppresses  us  with  the  gulfs  of  space  ; 
geology  with  the  gulfs  of  time  ;  history  and  travel 
with  a  babel  of  vain  existence.  And  here  as  in  the 
former  case,  our  perplexities  cannot  be  explained 
away.  We  can  only  meet  them  by  seeing  that  if 
they  have  any  power  at  all,  they  are  all-powerful, 
and  that  they  will  not  destroy  religion  only,  but  the 
entire  moral  conception  of  man  also.  Religious  be- 
lief, and  moral  belief  likewise,  involve  both  of  them 
some  vast  mystery ;  and  reason  can  do  nothing  but 
focalise,  not  solve  it. 

All,  then,  that  I  am  trying  to  make  evident  is  this 
— and  this  must  be  sufficient  for  us — not  that  theism, 
with  its  attendant  doctrines,  presents  us  with  no  dif- 
ficulties, necessitates  no  baffling  contradictions  in 
terms,  and  confronts  us  with  no  terrible  and  piteous 
spectacles,  but  that  all  this  is  not  peculiar  to  theism. 
It  is  not  the  price  we  pay  for  rising  from  morality  to 
religion.  It  is  the  price  we  pay  for  rising  from  the 
natural  to  the  supernatural.  Once  double  the  sum 
of  things  by  adding  this  second  world  to  it,  and  it 
swells  to  such  a  size  that  our  reason  can  no  longer 
encircle  it.  We  are  torn  this  way  and  that  by  con- 
victions, each  of  which  is  equally  necessary,  but 
each  of  which  excludes  the  others.  When  we  try  to 


MORALITY  AND  NATURAL   THEISM.  263 

grasp  them  all  at  once,  our  mind  is  like  a  man  tied 
to  wild  horses  ;  or  like  Phaeton  in  the  Sun's  chariot, 
bewildered  and  powerless  over  the  intractable  and 
the  terrible  team.  We  can  only  recover  our  strength 
by  a  full  confession  of  our  weakness.  We  can  only 
lay  hold  011  the  beliefs  that  we  see  to  be  needful,  by 
asking  faith  to  join  hands  with  reason.  If  we  refuse 
to  do  this,  there  is  but  one  alternative.  Without 
faith  we  can  perhaps  explain  things  if  we  will ;  but 
we  must  first  make  them  not  worth  explaining.  We 
can  only  think  them  out  entirely  by  regarding  them 
as  something  not  worth  thinking  out  at  all. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

THE  HUMAN  EACE  AND  REVELATION. 

'  The  scandal  of  the  pious  Christian,  and  the  fallacious  triumph  of  the 
infidel,  should  cease  as  soon  as  they  recollect  not  only  by  whom,  but  like- 
wise to  ichom,  tlie  Divine  Revelation  was  given.' — GIBBON.  ' 

AND  now  let  us  suppose  ourselves  convinced,  at 
least  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  man  will  al- 
ways believe  in  himself  as  a  moral  being,  and  that  he 
will,  under  no  compulsion,  let  this  belief  go.  Grant- 
ing this,  from  what  we  have  just  seen,  thus  much  will 
be  plain  to  us,  that  theism,  should  it  ever  tend  to  re- 
assert itself,  can  have  no  check  to  fear  at  the  hands  of 
positive  thought.  Let  us,  therefore,  suppose  further, 
that  such  a  revival  of  faith  is  imminent,  and  that  the 
enlightened  world,  with  its  eyes  wide  open,  is  about 
to  turn  once  again  to  religious  desires  and  aims.  This 
brings  us  face  to  face  with  the  second  question,  that 
we  have  not  as  yet  touched  upon :  will  the  religion 
thus  turned  to  be  a  natural  religion  only,  or  is  it  pos- 

1  It  is  curious  to  reflect  that  what  Gibbon  said  as  a  sarcasm,  is  really 
a  serious  and  profound  truth,  and  leads  to  conclusions  exactly  opposite 
to  those  drawn  from  it  in  that  witty  and  most  fascinating  chapter  from 
which  the  above  words  are  quoted. 

264 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         265 

sible  that  some  exclusive  dogmatism  may  be  recog- 
nised as  a  supernatural  re-statement  of  it  ? 

Before  going  further  with  this  question  it  will  be 
well  to  say  a  few  words  as  to  the  exact  position  it  oc- 
cupies. This,  with  regard  to  the  needs  of  man,  is 
somewhat  different  to  the  position  of  natural  theism. 
That  a  natural  theism  is  essential  to  man's  moral  be- 
ing is  a  proposition  that  can  be  more  or  less  rigidly 
demonstrated ;  but  that  a  revelation  is  essential  as  a 
supplement  to  natural  theism  can  be  impressed  upon 
us  only  in  a  much  looser  way.  Indeed,  many  men 
who  believe  most  firmly  that  without  religion  human 
life  will  be  dead,  rest  their  hopes  for  the  future  not 
on  the  revival  and  triumph  of  any  one  alleged  reve- 
lation, but  on  the  gradual  evanescence  of  the  special 
claims  of  all.  Nor  can  we  find  any  sharp  and  defined 
line  of  argument  to  convince  them  that  they  are  wrong. 
The  objections,  however,  to  which  this  position  is  open 
are,  I  think,  none  the  less  cogent  because  they  are 
somewhat  general ;  and  to  all  practical  men,  conver- 
sant with  life  and  history,  it  must  be  plain  that  the  ne- 
cessity of  doing  God's  will  being  granted,  it  is  a  most 
anxious  and  earnest  question  whether  that  will  has  not 
been  in  some  special  and  articulate  way  revealed  to  us. 

Take  the  mass  of  religious  humanity,  and  giving  it 
a  natural  creed,  it  will  be  found  that  instinctively  and 
inevitably  it  asks  for  more.  Such  a  creed  by  itself 
has  excited  more  longings  than  it  has  satisfied,  and 


266  &  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

raised  more  perplexities  than  it  has  set  at  rest.  .  It  is 
true  that  it  has  supplied  men  with  a  sufficient  analy- 
sis of  the  worth  they  attach  to  life,  and  of  the  mo- 
mentous issues  attendant  on  the  way  in  which  they 
live  it.  But  when  they  come  practically  to  choose 
their  way,  they  find  that  such  religion  is  of  little 
help  to  them.  It  never  puts  out  a  hand  to  lift  or  lead 
them.  It  is  an  alluring  voice,  heard  far  off  through 
a  fog,  and  calling  to  them,  '  Follow  me  ! '  but  it  leaves 
them  in  the  fog  to  pick  their  own  way  out  towards 
it,  over  rocks  and  streams  and  pitfalls,  which  they 
can  but  half  distinguish,  and  amongst  which  they 
may  be  either  killed  or  crippled,  and  are  almost  cer- 
tain to  grow  bewildered.  And  even  should  there  be 
a  small  minority,  who  feel  that  this  is  not  true  of 
themselves,  they  can  hardly  help  feeling  that  it  is 
true  of  the  world  in  general.  A  purely  natural  the- 
ism, with  no  organs  of  human  speech,  and  with  no 
machinery  for  making  its  spirit  articulate,  never  has 
ruled  men,  and,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  never  possibly 
can  rule  them.  The  choices  which  our  life  consists 
of  are  definite  things.  The  rule  which  is  to  guide 
our  choices  must  be  something  definite  also.  And 
here  it  is  that  natural  theism  fails.  It  may  supply 
us  with  the  major  premiss,  but  it  is  vague  and  uncer- 
tain about  the  minor.  It  can  tell  us  with  sufficient 
emphasis  that  all  vice  is  to  be  avoided  ;  it  is  contin- 
ually at  a  loss  to  tell  us  whether  this  thing  or  whether 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         267 

that  thing  is  vicious.  Indeed,  this  practical  insuffi- 
ciency of  natural  theism  is  borne  witness  to  by  the 
very  existence  of  all  alleged  revelations.  For,  if  none 
of  these  be  really  the  special  word  of  God,  a  belief  in 
them  is  all  the  more  a  sign  of  a  general  need  in  man. 
If  none  of  them  represent  the  actual  attainment  of 
help,  they  all  of  them  embody  the  passionate  and 
persistent  cry  for  it. 

We  shall  understand  this  more  clearly  if  we  con- 
sider one  of  the  first  characteristics  that  a  revelation 
necessarily  claims,  and  the  results  that  are  at  this 
moment,  in  a  certain  prominent  case,  attending  on  a 
denial  of  it.  The  characteristic  I  speak  of  is  an  abso- 
lute infallibility.  Any  supernatural  religion  that  re- 
nounces its  claim  to  this,  it  is  clear  can  profess  to  be 
a  semi-revelation  only.  It  is  a  hybrid  thing,  partly 
natural  and  partly  supernatural,  and  it  thus  practi- 
cally has  all  the  qualities  of  a  religion  that  is  wholly 
natural.  In  so  far  as  it  professes  to  be  revealed,  it  of 
course  professes  to  be  infallible  ;  but  if  the  revealed 
part  be  in  the  first  place  hard  to  distinguish,  and  in 
the  second  place  hard  to  understand — if  it  may  mean 
many  things,  and  many  of  those  things  contradict- 
ory— it  might  just  as  well  have  been  never  made  at 
all.  To  make  it  in  any  sense  an  infallible  revelation, 
or  in  other  words  a  revelation  at  all,  to  us,  we  need 
a  power  to  interpret  the  testament  that  shall  have 
equal  authority  with  that  testament  itself. 


268  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

Simple  as  this  truth  seems,  mankind  have  been  a 
long  time  in  learning  it.  Indeed,  it  is  only  in  the 
present  day  that  its  practical  meaning  has  come 
generally  to  be  recognised.  But  now  at  this  mo- 
ment upon  all  sides  of  us,  history  is  teaching  it  to 
us  by  an  example,  so  clearly  that  we  can  no  longer 
mistake  it. 

That  example  is  Protestant  Christianity,  and  the 
condition  to  which,  after  three  centuries,  it  is  now 
visibly  bringing  itself.  It  is  at  last  beginning  to 
exhibit  to  us  the  true  result  of  the  denial  of  infalli- 
bility to  a  religion  that  professes  to  be  supernatural. 
We  are  at  last  beginning  to  see  in  it  neither  the 
purifier  of  a  corrupted  revelation,  nor  the  corrupter 
of  a  pure  revelation,  but  the  practical  denier  of  all 
revelation  whatsoever.  It  is  fast  evaporating  into  a 
mere  natural  theism,  and  is  thus  showing  us  what, 
as  a  governing  power,  natural  theism  is.  Let  us 
look  at  England,  Europe,  and  America,  and  consider 
the  condition  of  the  entire  Protestant  world.  Re- 
ligion, it  is  true,  we  shall  still  find  in  it ;  but  it  is 
religion  from  which  not  only  the  supernatural  ele- 
ment is  disappearing,  but  in  which  the  natural  ele- 
ment is  fast  becoming  nebulous.  It  is  indeed  grow- 
ing, as  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  says  it  is,  into  a  religion 
of  dreams.  All  its  doctrines  are  growing  vague  as 
dreams,  and  like  dreams  their  outlines  are  for  ever 
changing.  Mr.  Stephen  has  pitched  on  a  very  happy 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         269 

illustration  of  this.  A  distinguished  clergyman  of 
the  English  Church,  he  reminds  us,  has  preached 
and  published  a  set  of  sermons,1  in  which  he  denies 
emphatically  any  belief  in  eternal  punishment,  al- 
though admitting  at  the  same  time  that  the  opinion 
of  the  Christian  world  is  against  him.  These  ser- 
mons gave  rise  to  a  discussion  in  one  of  the  leading 
monthly  reviews,  to  which  Protestant  divines  of  all 
shades  of  opinion  contributed  their  various  argu- 
ments. '  It  is  barely  possible?  says  Mr.  Stephen, 
'  with  the  best  intentions,  to  take  such  a  discussion 
seriously.  Boswell  tells  us  how  a  lady  interrogated 
Dr.  Johnson  as  to  the  nature  of  the  spiritual  body. 
She  seemed  desirous,  he  adds,  of  "knowing  more; 
but  he  left  t?ie  subject  in  obscurity"  We  smile  at 
BoswelVs  evident  impression  that  Johnson' could,  if 
he  had  chosen,  haw  dispelled  the  darkness.  When 
we  find  a  number  of  educated  gentlemen  seriously 
enquiring  as  to  the  conditions  of  existence  in  the 
next  world,  we  feel  that  they  are  sharing  BosweWs 
naivete  without  his  excuse.  What  can  any  human 
being  outside  a  pulpit  say  upon  such  a  subject 
which  does  not  amount  to  a  confession  of  his  own 
ignorance,  coupled,  it  may  be,  with  more  or  less 
suggestion  of  shadowy  hopes  and  fears  ?  Have  the 
secrets  of  the  prison-house  really  been  revealed  to 
Canon  Farrar  or  Mr.  Beresford  Hope  ?  .  .  .  When 

1  Our  Eternal  Hope.     By  Canon  Farrar. 


270  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

men  search  into  the  urikowdble,  tliey  naturally  ar- 
rive at  very  different  results.''  And  Mr.  Stephen 
argues  with  perfect  justice  that  if  we  are  to  judge 
Christianity  from  such  discussions  as  these,  its  doc- 
trines of  a  future  life  are  all  visibly  receding  into  a 
vague  ' dream-land  /'  and  we  shall  be  quite  ready 
to  admit,  as  he  says,  in  words  I  have  already  quoted, 
'  that  the  impertinent  young  curate  who  tells  [him 
Tie]  will  be  burnt  everlastingly  for  not  sharing  such 
superstitions,  is  just  as  ignorant  as  [Mr.  Stephen 
himself  \  and  that  [Mr.  Stephen]  knows  as  much  as 
\his~]  dog.J 

The  critic,  in  the  foregoing  passages,  draws  his 
conclusion  from  the  condition  of  but  one  Protestant 
doctrine.  But  he  might  draw  the  same  conclusion 
from  all ;  for  the  condition  of  all  of  them  is  the 
same.  The  divinity  of  Christ,  the  nature  of  his 
atonement,  the  constitution  of  the  Trinity,  the  effi- 
cacy of  the  sacraments,  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible 
— there  is  not  one  of  these  points  on  which  the  doc- 
trines, once  so  fiercely  fought  for,  are  not  now, 
among  the  Protestants,  getting  as  vague  and  vary- 
ing, as  weak  and  as  compliant  to  the  caprice  of  each 
individual  thinker,  as  the  doctrine  of  eternal  punish- 
ment. And  Mr.  Stephen  and  his  school  exaggerate 
nothing  in  the  way  in  which  they  represent  the  spec- 
tacle. Protestantism,  in  fact,  is  at  last  becoming 
explicitly  what  it  always  was  implicitly,  not  a  super- 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         271 

natural  religion  which  fulfils  the    natural,   but  a 
natural  religion  which  denies  the  supernatural. 

And  what,  as  a  natural  religion,  is  its  working 
power  in  the  world  3  Much  of  its  earlier  influence 
doubtless  still  survives  ;  but  that  is  a  survival  only 
of  what  is  passing,  and  we  must  not  judge  it  by  that. 
We  must  judge  it  by  what  it  is  growing  into,  not  by 
what  it  is  growing  out  of.  And  judged  in  this  way, 
its  practical  power — its  moral,  its  teaching,  its  guid- 
ing power — is  fast  growing  as  weak  and  as  uncertain 
as  its  theology.  As  long  as  its  traditional  moral 
system  is  in  accordance  with  what  men,  on  other 
grounds,  approve  of,  it  may  serve  to  express  the 
general  tendency  impressively,  and  to  invest  it  with 
the  sanction  of  many  reverend  associations.  But 
let  the  general  tendency  once  begin  to  conflict  with 
it,  and  its  inherent  weakness  in  an  instant  becomes 
apparent.  We  may  see  this  by  considering  the  moral 
character  of  Christ,  and  the  sort  of  weight  that  is 
claimed  for  His  example.  This  example,  so  the 
Christian  world  teaches,  is  faultless  and  infallible; 
and  as  long  as  we  believe  this,  the  example  has 
supreme  authority.  But  apply  to  this  the  true 
Protestant  method,  and  the  authority  soon  shows 
signs  of  wavering.  Let  us  once  deny  that  Christ 
was  more  than  a  faultless  man,  and  we  lose  by  that 
denial  our  authority  for  asserting  that  he  was  as 
much  as  a  faultless  man.  Even  should  it  so  happen 


272  IB  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

that  we  do  approve  entirely  of  his  conduct,  it  is  we 
who  are  approving  of  him,  not  he  who  is  approving 
of  us.  The  old  position  is  reversed :  we  become  the 
patrons  of  our  most  worthy  Judge  eternal ;  and  the 
moral  infallibility  is  transferred  from  him  to  ourselves. 
In  other  words,  the  practical  Protestant  formula  can 
be  nothing  more  than  this.  The  Protestant  teacher 
says  to  us,  '  SucJi  a  way  of  life  is  the  best,  take  my 
word  for  it :  and  if  you  want  an  example,  go  to  that 
excellent  Son  of  David,  who,  take  my  word  for  it, 
was  the  very  best  of  men.1  But  even  in  this  case  the 
question  arises,  how  shall  the  Protestants  interpret 
the  character  that  they  praise  ?  And  to  this  they 
can  never  give  any  satisfactory  answer.  What  really 
happens  with  them  is  inevitable  and  obvious.  The 
character  is  simply  for  them  a  symbol  of  what  each 
happens  to  think  most  admirable  ;  and  the  identity 
in  all  cases  of  its  historical  details  does  not  produce 
an  identity  as  of  a  single  portrait,  but  an  identity  as 
of  one  frame  applied  to  many.  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold, 
for  instance,  sees  in  Jesus  one  sort  of  man,  Father 
Newman  another,  Charles  Kingsley  another,  and  M. 
Renan  another  ;  and  the  Imitatio  Ghristi,  as  under- 
stood by  these,  will  be  found  in  each  case  to  mean  a 
very  different  thing.  The  difference  between  these 
men,  however,  will  seem  almost  unanimity,  if  we 
compare  them  with  others  who,  so  far  as  logic  and 
authority  go,  have  just  as  good  a  claim  on  our  atten- 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         373 

tion.  There  is  hardly  any  conceivable  aberration  of- 
moral  licence  that  has  not,  in  some  quarter  or  other, 
embodied  itself  into  a  rule  of  life,  and  claimed  to  be 
the  proper  outcome  of  Protestant  Christianity.  Nor 
is  this  true  only  of  the  wilder  and  more  eccentric 
sects.  It  is  true  of  graver  and  more  weighty  think- 
ers also ;  so  much  so,  that  a  theological  school  in 
Germany  has  maintained  boldly  ;  that  fornication 
is  blameless,  and  that  it  is  not  interdicted  by  tlte 
precepts  of  the  GospeV  1 

The  matter,  however,  does  not  end  thus.  The 
men  I  have  just  mentioned  agree,  all  of  them,  that 
Christ's  moral  example  was  perfect ;  and  their  only 
disagreement  has  been  as  to  what  that  example  was. 
But  the  Protestant  logic  will  by  no  means  leave  us 
here.  That  alleged  perfection,  if  we  ourselves  are  to 
be  the  judges  of  it,  is  sure,  by-and-by,  to  exhibit  to 
us  traces  of  imperfection.  And  this  is  exactly  the 
thing  that  has  already  begun  to  happen.  A  genera- 
tion ago  one  of  the  highest-minded  and  most  logical 
of  our  English  Protestants,  Professor  Francis  New- 
man, declared  that  in  Christ's  character  there  were 
certain  moral  deficiencies  ;2  and  the  last  blow  to  the 
moral  authority  of  Protestantism  was  struck  by  one 
of  its  own  household.  It  is  true  that  Professor  New- 

1  See  Dollinger's  Continuation  of  Hortig's  Church  History,  quoted 
by  Mr.  J.  B.  Robertson,  in  his  Memoir  of  Dr.  Mochler. 
5  See  Phases  of  my  Faith,  by  Francis  Newman, 
18 


274  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

man's  censures  were  small  and  were  not  irreverent. 
But  if  these  could  come  from  a  man  of  his  intense 
piety,  what  will  and  what  do  come  from  other  quar- 
ters may  be  readily  conjectured.  Indeed,  the  fact  is 
daily  growing  more  and  more  evident,  that  for  the 
world  that  still  calls  itself  Protestant,  the  autocracy 
of  Christ's  moral  example  is  gone  ;  and  its  nominal 
retention  of  power  only  makes  its  real  loss  of  it  the 
more  visible.  It  merely  reflects  and  focalises  the 
uncertainty  that  men  are  again  feeling — the  uncer- 
tainty and  the  sad  bewilderment.  The  words  and 
the  countenance,  once  so  sure  and  steadfast,  now 
change,  as  we  look  at,  and  listen  to  them,  into  new 
accents  and  aspects  ;  and  the  more  earnestly  we  gaze 
and  listen,  the  less  can  we  distinguish  clearly  what 
we  hear  or  see.  '  What  shall  we  do  to  be  saved  f ' 
men  are  again  crying.  And  the  lips  that  were  once 
oracular  now  merely  seem  to  murmur  back  confus- 
edly, '  Alas  !  what  shall  you  do  f ' 

Such  and  so  helpless,  even  now,  is  natural  theism 
showing  itself;  and  in  the  dim  and  momentous 
changes  that  are  coming  over  things,  in  the  vast  flux 
of  opinion  that  is  preparing,  in  the  earthquake  that 
is  rocking  the  moral  ground  under  us,  overturning 
and  engulfing  the  former  landmarks,  and  re-opening 
the  graves  of  the  buried  lusts  of  paganism,  it  will 
show  itself  very  soon  more  helpless  still.  Its  feet 
are  on  the  earth  only.  The  earth  trembles,  and  it 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         275 

trembles :  it  is  in  the  same  case  as  we  are.  It 
stretches  in  vain  its  imploring  hands  to  heaven. 
But  the  heaven  takes  no  heed  of  it.  No  divine  hand 
reaches  down  to  it  to  uphold  and  guide  it. 

This  must  be  the  feeling,  I  believe,  of  most  honest 
and  practical  men,  with  regard  to  natural  religion, 
and  its  necessary  practical  inefficiency.  Nor  will  the 
want  it  necessarily  leaves  of  a  moral  rule  be  the  only 
consideration  that  will  force  this  conviction  on  them. 
The  heart,  as  the  phrase  goes,  will  corroborate  the 
evidence  of  the  Jiead.  It  will  be  felt,  even  more 
forcibly  than  it  can  be  reasoned,  that  if  there  be  in- 
deed a  God  who  loves  and  cares  for  men,  he  must 
surely,  or  almost  surely,  have  spoken  in  some  audi- 
ble and  certain  way  to  them.  At  any  rate  I  shall 
not  be  without  many  who  agree  with  me,  when  I  say 
that  for  the  would-be  religious  world  it  is  an  anx- 
ious and  earnest  question  whether  any  special  and 
explicit  revelation  from  God  exist  for  us ;  and  this 
being  the  case,  it  will  be  not  lost  time  if  we  try  to 
deal  fairly  and  dispassionately  with  the  question. 

Before  going  further,  however,  let  us  call  to  mind 
two  things.  Let  us  remember  first,  that  if  we  expect 
to  find  a  revelation  at  all,  it  is  morally  certain  that 
it  must  be  a  revelation  already  in  existence.  It  is 
hardly  possible,  if  we  consider  that  all  the  super- 
natural claims  that  have  been  made  hitherto  are 
false,  to  expect  that  a  new  manifestation,  altogether 


276  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

different  in  kind,  is  in  store  for  the  world  in  the  fu- 
ture. Secondly,  our  enquiries  being  thus  confined 
to  religions  that  are  already  in  existence,  what  we 
are  practically  concerned  with  is  the  truth  of  Chris- 
tianity only.  It  is  true  that  we  have  heard,  on  all 
sides,  of  the  superiority  of  other  religions  to  the 
Christian.  But  the  men  who  hold  such  language, 
though  they  may  affect  to  think  that  such  religions 
are  superior  in  certain  moral  points,  yet  never  dream 
of  claiming  for  them  the  miraculous  and  supernat- 
ural authority  that  they  deny  to  Christianity.  No 
man  denies  that  Christ  was  born  of  a  virgin,  in  order 
to  make  the -same  claim  for  Buddha :  or  denies  the 
Christian  Trinity  in  order  to  affirm  the  Brahminic. 
There  is  but  one  alleged  revelation  that,  as  a  revela- 
tion, the  progressive  nations  of  the  world  are  con- 
cerned with,  or  whose  supernatural  claims  are  still. 
worthy  of  being  examined  by  us  :  and  that  religion 
is  the  Christian.  These  claims,  it  is  true,  are  being 
fast  discredited  ;  but  still,  as  yet  they  have  not  been 
silenced  wholly  ;  and  what  I  propose  to  ask  now  is, 
what  chance  is  there  of  their  power  again  reviving. 

Now  considering  the  way  in  which  I  have  just 
spoken  of  Protestantism,  it  may  seem  to  many  that 
I  have  dismissed  this  question  already.  With  the 
1  enlightened'  English  thinker  such  certainly  will  be 
the  first  impression.  But  there  is  one  point  thct 
such  thinkers  all  forget :  Protestant  Christianity  is 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         277 

not  the  only  form  of  it.  They  have  still  the  form  to 
deal  with  which  is  the  oldest,  the  most  legitimate, 
and  the  most  coherent — the  Church  of  Rome.  They 
surely  cannot  forget  the  existence  of  this  Church  or 
her  magnitude.  To  suppose  this  would  be  to  at- 
tribute to  them  too  insular,  or  rather  too  provincial, 
an  ignorance.  The  cause,  however,  certainly  is  ig- 
norance, and  an  ignorance  which,  though  less  sur- 
prising, is  far  deeper.  In  this  country  the  popular 
conception  of  Rome  has  been  so  distorted  by  our 
familiarity  with  Protestantism,  that  the  true  concep- 
tion of  her  is  something  quite  strange  to  us.  Our 
divines  have  exhibited  her  to  us  as  though  she  were 
a  lapsed  Protestant  sect,  and  they  have  attacked  her 
for  being  false  to  doctrines  that  were  never  really 
hers.  They  have  failed  to  see  that  the  first  and  es- 
sential difference  which  separates  her  from  them 
lies,  primarily  not  in  any  special  dogma,  but  in  the 
authority  on  which  all  her  dogmas  rest.  Protestants, 
basing  their  religion  on  the  Bible  solely,  have  con- 
ceived that  Catholics  of  course  profess  to  do  so  like- 
wise ;  and  have  covered  them  with  invective  for 
being  traitors  to  their  supposed  profession.  But 
the  Church's  primary  doctrine  is  her  own  perpetual 
infallibility.  She  is  inspired,  she  declares,  by  the 
same  Spirit  that  inspired  the  Bible ;  and  her  voice 
is,  equally  with  the  Bible,  the  voice  of  God.  This 
theory,  however,  upon  which  really  her  whole  fabric 


278  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

rests,  popular  Protestantism  either  ignores  alto- 
gether, or  treats  it  as  if  it  were  a  modern  supersti- 
tion, which,  so  far  from  being  essential  to  the 
Church's  system,  is,  on  the  contrary,  inconsistent 
with  it.  Looked  at  in  this  way,  Rome  to  the  Prot- 
estant's mind  has  seemed  naturally  to  be  a  mass  of 
superstitions  and  dishonesties ;  and  it  is  this  view  of 
her  that,  strangely  enough,  our  modern  advanced 
thinkers  have  accepted  without  question.  Though 
they  have  trusted  the  Protestants  in  nothing  else, 
they  have  trusted  them  here.  They  have  taken  the 
Protestants'  word  for  it,  that  Protestantism  is  more 
reasonable  than  Romanism ;  and  they  think,  there- 
fore, that  if  they  have  destroyed  the  former,  d  for- 
tiori have  they  destroyed  the  latter.1 

N"o  conception  of  the  matter,  however,  could  be 
more  false  than  this.  To  whatever  criticism  the 

1  It  is  difficult  on  any  other  supposition  to  accoun  t  for  the  marked 
fact  that  hardly  any  of  our  English  rationalists  have  criticised  Chris- 
tianity, except  as  presented  to  them  in  a  form  essentially  Protestant  ; 
and  that  a  large  proportion  of  their  criticisms  are  solely  applicable  to 
this.  It  is  amusing,  too,  to  observe  how,  to  men  of  often  such  really 
wide  minds,  all  theological  authority  is  represented  by  the  various  so- 
cial types  of  contemporary  Anglican  or  dissenting  dignitaries.  Men 
such  as  Professors  Huxley  and  Clifford,  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen,  and  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison,  can  find  no  representatives  of  dogmatism  but  in 
bishops,  deans,  curates,  Presbyterian  ministers — and,  above  all,  cu- 
rates. The  one  mouth-piece  of  the  Ecclesia  docens  is  for  them  the 
parish  pulpit.;  and  the  more  ignorant  be  its  occupant  the  more  repre- 
sentative do  they  think  his  utterances.  Whilst  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold 
apparently  thinks  the  whole  cause  of  revealed  religion  stands  and 
falls  with  the  vagaries  of  the  present  Bishop  of  Gloucester. 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         279 

Catholic  position  may  be  open,  it  is  certainly  not  thus 
included  in  Protestantism,  nor  is  it  reached  through 
it.  Let  us  try  and  consider  the  matter  a  little  more 
truly.  Let  us  grant  all  that  hostile  criticism  can  say 
against  Protestanism  as  a  supernatural  religion:  in 
other  words,  let  us  set  it  aside  altogether.  Let  us 
suppose  nothing,  to  start  with,  in  the  world  but  a 
natural  moral  sense,  and  a  simple  natural  theism ; 
and  let  us  then  see  the  relation  of  the  Church  of 
Rome  to  that.  Approached  in  this  way,  the  religious 
world  will  appear  to  us  as  a  body  of  natural  theists, 
all  agreeing  that  they  must  do  God's  will,  but  differ- 
ing widely  amongst  themselves  as  to  what  His  will 
and  His  nature  are.  Their  moral  and  religious  views 
will  be  equally  vague  and  dreamlike — more  dream- 
like even  than  those  of  the  Protestant  world  at  pres- 
ent. Their  theories  as  to  the  future  will  be  but 
1  shadowy  hopes  and  fears. ,'  Their  practice,  in  the 
present,  will  vary  from  asceticism  to  the  widest 
license.  And  yet,  in  spite  of  all  this  confusion  and 
difference,  there  w^ill  be  amongst  them  a  vague  tend- 
ency to  unanimity.  Each  man  will  be  dreaming  his 
own  spiritual  dream,  and  the  dreams  of  all  will  be 
different.  All  their  dreams,  it  will  be  plain,  cannot 
represent  reality  ;  and  yet  the  belief  will  be  common 
to  all  that  some  common  reality  is  represented  by 
them.  Men,  therefore,  will  begin  to  compare  their 
dreams  together,  and  try  to  draw  out  of  them  the 


280  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

common  element,  so  that  the  dream  may  come  slowly 
to  be  the  same  for  all ;  that,  if  it  grows,  it  may  gro\v 
by  some  recognizable  laws ;  that  it  may,  in  other 
words,  lose  its  character  of  a  dream,  and  assume  that 
of  a  reality.  We  suppose,  therefore,  that  our  nat- 
ural theists  form  themselves  into  a  kind  of  parlia- 
ment, in  which  they  may  compare,  adjust,  and  give 
shape  to  the  ideas  that  were  before  so  wavering,  and 
which  shall  contain  some  machinery  for  formulating 
such  agreements  as  may  be  come  to.  The  common 
religious  sense  of  the  world  is  thus  organized,  and  its 
conclusions  registered.  We  have  no  longer  the  wa- 
vering dreams  of  men ;  we  have  instead  of  them  the 
constant  vision  of  man. 

Now  in  such  a  universal  parliament  we  see  what 
the  Church  of  Rome  essentially  is,  viewed  from  her 
natural  side.  She  is  ideally,  if  not  actually,  the 
parliament  of  the  believing  world.  Her  doctrines,  as 
she  one  by  one  unfolds  them,  emerge  upon  us  like 
petals  from  a  half -closed  bud.  They  are  not  added 
arbitrarily  from  without ;  they  are  developed  from 
within.  They  are  the  flowers  contained  from  the 
first  in  the  bud  of  our  moral  consciousness.  When 
she  formulates  in  these  days  something  that  has  not 
been  formulated  before,  she  is  no  more  enunciating  a 
new  truth  than  was  Newton  when  he  enunciated  the 
theory  of  gravitation.  Whatever  truths,  hitherto 
hidden,  she  may  in  the  course  of  time  grow  conscious 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         281 

of,  she  holds  that  these  were  always  implied  in  her 
tracking,  though  before  she  did  not  know  it ;  just  as 
gravitation  was  implied  in  many  ascertained  facts 
that  men  knew  well  enough  long  before  they  knew 
that  it  was  implied  in  them.  Thus  far,  then,  the 
Church  of  Rome  essentially  is  the  spiritual  sense  of 
humanity,  speaking  to  men  through  its  proper  and 
only  possible  organ.  Its  intricate  machinery,  such 
as  its  systems  of  representation,  its  methods  of 
voting,  the  appointment  of  its  speaker,  and  the  legal 
formalities  required  in  the  recording  of  its  decrees, 
are  things  accidental  only  ;  or  if  they  are  necessary, 
they  are  necessary  only  in  a  secondary  way. 

But  the  picture  of  the  Church  thus  far  is  only  half 
drawn.  She  is  all  this,  but  she  is  something  more 
than  this.  She  is  not  only  the  parliament  of  spirit- 
ual man,  but  she  is  such  a  parliament  guided  by  the 
Spirit  of  God.  The  work  of  that  Spirit  may  be  se- 
cret, and  to  the  natural  eyes  untraceable,  as  the 
work  of  the  human  will  is  in  the  human  brain.  But 
none  the  less  it  is  there. 

Totam  infusa  per  art  us 
Mem  agitat  molem,  et  magno  se  corpore  miscet. 

The  analogy  of  the  human  brain  is  here  of  great 
help  to  us.  The  human  brain  is  an  arrangement 
of  material  particles  which  can  become  connected 
with  consciousness  only  in  virtue  of  such  a  special 


282  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

arrangement.  The  Church  is  theoretically  an  ar- 
rangement of  individuals  which  can  become  con- 
nected with  the  Spirit  of  God  only  in  virtue  of  an 
arrangement  equally  special. 

If  this  be  a  true  picture  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
and  the  place  which  the  only  revelation  we  are  con- 
cerned with  ideally  holds  in  the  world,  there  can  be 
no  d  priori  difficulty  in  the  passage  from  a  natural 
religion  to  such  a  supernatural  one.  The  difficulties 
begin  when  we  compare  the  ideal  picture  with  the 
actual  facts  ;  and  it  is  true,  when  we  do  this,  that 
they  at  once  confront  us  with  a  strength  that  seems 
altogether  disheartening.  These  difficulties  are  of 
two  distinct  kinds ;  some,  as  in  the  case  of  natural 
theism,  are  moral ;  others  are  historical.  We  will 
deal  with  the  former  first,  beginning  with  that  which 
is  at  once  the  profoundest  and  the  most  obvious. 

The  Church,  as  has  been  said  already,  is  ideally 
the  parliament  of  the  whole  believing  world  ;  but 
we  find,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  she  is  the  parlia- 
ment of  a  small  part  only.  Now  what  shall  we  say 
to  this  ?  If  God  would  have  all  men  do  His  will, 
why  should  He  place  the  knowledge  of  it  within 
reach  of  such  a  small  minority  of  them?  And  to 
this  question  we  can  give  no  answer.  It  is  a  mys- 
tery, and  we  must  acknowledge  frankly  that  it  is 
one.  But  there  is  this  to  say  yet — that  it  is  not  a 
new  mystery.  We  already  suppose  ourselves  to 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         283 

have  accepted  it  in  a  simpler  form  :  in  the  form  of 
the  presence  of  evil,  and  the  partial  prevalence  of 
good.  By  acknowledging  the  claim  of  the  special 
revelation  in  question,  we  are  not  adding  to  the 
complexity  of  that  old  world-problem.  I  am  aware, 
however,  that  many  think  just  the  reverse  of  this. 
I  will  therefore  dwell  upon  the  subject  for  a  few 
moments  longer.  To  many  who  can  accept  the  diffi- 
culty of  the  partial  presence  of  good,  the  difficulty- 
seems  wantonly  aggravated  by  the  claims  of  a  special 
revelation.  These  claims  seem  to  them  to  do  two 
things.  In  the  first  place,  they  are  thought  to  make 
the  presence  of  good  even  more  partial  than  it  oth- 
erwise would  be ;  and  secondly  —  which  is  a  still 
greater  stumbling-block — to  oblige  us  to  condemn  as 
evil  much  that  would  else  seem  good  of  the  purest 
kind.  There  are  many  men,  as  we  must  all  know, 
without  the  Church,  who  are  doing  their  best  to  fight 
their  way  to  God ;  and  orthodoxy  is  supposed  to 
pass  a  cruel  condemnation  on  these,  because  they 
have  not  assented  to  some  obscure  theory,  their  re- 
jection or  ignorance  of  which  has  plainly  stained 
neither  their  lives  nor  hearts.  And  of  orthodoxy 
under  certain  forms  this  is  no  doubt  true ;  but  it  is 
not  true  of  the  orthodoxy  of  Catholicism.  There  is 
no  point,  probably,  connected  with  this  question, 
about  which  the  general  world  is  so  misinformed  and 
ignorant,  as  the  sober  but  boundless  charity  of  what 


284  -IB  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

it  calls  the  anathematising  Church.  So  little  indeed 
is  this  charity  understood  generally,  that  to  assert 
it  seems  a  startling  paradox.  Most  paradoxes  are 
doubtless  in  reality  the  lies  they  at  first  sight  seem 
to  be ;  but  not  so  this  one.  It  is  the  simple  state- 
ment of  a  fact.  Never  was  there  a  religious  body, 
except  the  Roman,  that  laid  the  intense  stress  she 
does  on  all  her  dogmatic  teachings,  and  had  yet  the 
justice  that  comes  of  sympathy  for  those  that  can- 
not receive  them.  She  condemns  no  goodness,  she 
condemns  even  no  earnest  worship,  though  it  be 
outside  her  pale.  On  the  contrary,  she  declares 
explicitly  that  a  knowledge  of  '  the  one  true  God, 
our  Creator  and  Lord,'  may  be  attained  to  by  the 

*  natural  light  of  human  reason  J  meaning  by  ' rea- 
son '    faith  unenlightened  by  revelation ;   and  she 
declares  those  to  be  anathema  who  deny  this.     The 
holy  and  humble  men  of  heart  who  do  not  know  her, 
or  who  in  good  faith  reject  her,  she  commits  with 
confidence    to  God's    uncovenanted  mercies ;    and 
these  she  knows  are  infinite  ;  but,  except  as  revealed 
to  her,  she  can  of  necessity  say  nothing  distinct 
about  them.     It  is  admitted  by  the  wrorld  at  large, 
that  of  her  supposed  bigotry  she  has  no  bitterer  or 
more  extreme  exponents  than  the  Jesuits  ;  and  this 
is  what  a  Jesuit  theologian  says  upon  this  matter : 

*  A  heretic,  so  long  as  he  believes  his  sect  to  be  more 
or  equally  deserving  of  belief,  has  no  obligation  to 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         gS"> 

believe  the  Church  .  .  .  [and]  when  men  who  have 
been  brought  up  in  heresy,  are  persuaded  from  boy- 
hood that  we  impugn  and  attack  the  word  of  God,  that 
we  are  idolaters,  pestilent  deceivers,  and  are  there- 
fore to  be  shunned  as  pestilence,  they  cannot,  while 
tit  isper  *  motion  lasts,  with  a  safe  conscience  hear  us.J ' 
Thus  for  those  without  her  the  Church  has  one 
condemnation  only.  Her  anathemas  are  on  none 
but  those  who  reject  her  with  their  eyes  open,  by 
tampering  with  a  conviction  that  she  really  is  the 
truth.  These  are  condemned,  not  for  not  seeing 
that  the  teacher  is  true,  but  because  having  really 
seen  this,  they  continue  to  close  their  eyes  to  it. 
They  will  not  obey  when  they  know  they  ought  to 
obey.  And  thus  the  moral  offence  of  a  Catholic  in 
denying  some  recondite  doctrine,  does  not  lie  merely, 
and  need  not  lie  at  all,  in  the  immediate  bad  effects 
that  such  a  denial  would  necessitate  ;  but  in  the  dis- 
obedience, the  self-will,  and  the  rebellion  that  must 
in  such  a  case  be  both  a  cause  and  a  result  of  it. 

In  the  light  of  these  considerations,  though  the 
old  perplexity  of  evil  will  still  confront  us,  it  will  be 
seen  that  the  claims  of  Catholic  orthodoxy  do  noth- 
ing at  all  to  add  to  it.  If  orthodoxy,  however,  ad- 
mit so  much  good  without  itself,  we  may  perhaps 
be  inclined  to  ask  what  special  good  it  claims  within 

1  Busenbaum,  quoted  by  Dr.  J.  H.  Newman,  Letter  to  the  Duke  of 
Norfolk,  p.  65. 


286  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

itself,  and  what  possible  motives  can  exist  for  either 
understanding  or  teaching  it.  But  we  might  ask 
with  exactly  equal  force,  what  is  the  good  of  true 
physical-  science,  and  why  should  we  try-^to  impress 
on  the  world  its  teachings  ?  Such  a  question,  we 
can  at  once  see,  is  absurd.  Because  a  large  number 
of  men  know  nothing  of  physical  science,  and  are 
apparently  not  the  worse  for  their  ignorance,  we  do 
not  for  that  reason  think  physical  science  worthless. 
We  believe,  on  the  whole,  that  a  knowledge  of  the 
laws  of  matter,  including  those  of  our  organisms  and 
their  environments,  will  steadily  tend  to  better  our 
lives,  in  so  far  as  they  are  material.  It  will  tend,  for 
instance,  to  a  better  preservation  of  our  health. 
But  we  do  not  for  this  reason  deny  that  many  indi- 
viduals may  preserve  their  health  who  are  but  very 
partially  acquainted  with  the  laws  of  it.  Nor  do  we 
deny  the  value  of  a  thorough  study  of  astronomy 
and  meteorology  because  a  certain  practical  knowl- 
edge of  the  weather  and  of  navigation  may  be  at- 
tained without  it.  On  the  contrary,  we  hold  that 
the  fullest  knowledge  we  can  acquire  on  such  mat- 
ters it  is  our  duty  to  acquire,  and  not  acquire  only, 
but  as  far  as  possible  promulgate.  It  is  true  that 
the  mass  of  men  may  never  master  such  knowledge 
thoroughly ;  but  what  they  do  master  of  it  we  feel 
convinced  should  be  the  truth,  and  even  what  they  do 
not,  will,  we  feel  convinced,  be  some  indirect  profit 


TUB  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         287 

to  them.  And  the  case  of  spiritual  science  is  entire- 
ly analogous  to  the  case  of  natural  science.  A  man 
to  whom  the  truth  is  open  is  not  excused  from  find- 
ing it  because  he  knows  it  is  not  so  open  to  all.  A  he- 
retic who  denies  the  dogmas  of  the  Church  has  his 
counterpart  in  the  quack  who  denies  the  verified 
conclusions  of  science.  The  moral  condemnation 
that  is  given  to  the  one  is  illustrated  by  the  in- 
tellectual condemnation  that  is  given  to  the  other. 

If  we  will  think  this  over  carefully,  we  shall  get  a 
clearer  view  of  the  moral  value  claimed  for  itself  by 
orthodoxy.  Some  of  its  doctrines,  the  great  and 
pict arable  parts  of  them,  that  appeal  to  all,  and 
that  in  some  degree  can  be  taken  in  by  all,  it  de- 
clares doubtless  to  be  saving,  in  their  own  nature. 
But  for  the  mass  of  men  the  case  is  quite  different 
with  the  facts  underlying  these.  That  we  eat  Christ's 
body  in  the  Eucharist  is  a  belief  that,  in  a  practical 
way,  can  be  understood  perfectly  by  anyone ;  but 
the  philosophy  that  is  involved  in  this  belief  would 
be  to  most  men  the  merest  gibberish.  Yet  it  is  no 
more  unimportant  that  those  who  do  understand  this 
philosophy;  should  do  so  truly  and  transmit  it  faith- 
fully, than  it  is  unimportant  that  a  physician  should 
understand  the  action  of  alcohol,  because  anyone 
independent  of  such  knowledge  can  tell  that  so  many 
glasses  of  wine  will  have  such  and  such  an  effect  on 
him.  Theology  is  to  the  spiritual  body  what  anato 


288  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

my  and  medicine  are  to  the  natural  body.  The 
parts  they  each  play  in  our  lives  are  analogous,  and 
in  their  respective  worlds  their  raison  d'etre  is  the 
same.  What  then  can  be  shallower  than  the  rheto- 
ric of  such  thinkers  as  Mr.  Carlyle,  in  which  natural 
religion  and  orthodoxy  are  held  up  to  us  as  contrasts 
and  as  opposites,  the  former  being  praised  as  simple 
and  going  straight  to  the  heart,  and  the  latter  de- 
scribed and  declaimed  against  as  the  very  reverse  of 
this?  iOn  the  one  hand,'  it  is  said,  '•see  the  soul 
going  straight  to  its  God,  feeling  His  love,  and  con- 
tent that  others  should  feel  it.  On  the  other  hand,  see 
this  pure  and  free  communion,,  distracted  and  inter- 
rupted ~by  a  thousand  tortuous  reasonings  as  to  the 
exact  nature  of  it.  What  can  obscure  intellectual 
propositions,^  it  is  asked,  '  have  to  do  with  a  religion 
of  the  heart  f  And  do  not  they  check  the  latter  by 
'being  thus  bound  up  with  it  ? '  But  what  really  can 
be  more  misleading  than  this  ?  Natural  religion  is 
doubtless  simpler  in  one  sense  than  revealed  religion  ; 
but  it  is  only  simple  because  it  has  no  authoritative 
science  of  itself.  It  is  simple  for  the  same  reason 
that  a  boy's  account  of  having  given  himself  a  head- 
ache is  simpler  than  a  physician's  would  be.  The 
boy  says  merely,  '  1 ate  ten  tarts,  and  dranJc  three 
bottles  of  ginger-beer '.'  The  physician,  were  he  to 
explain  the  catastrophe,  would  describe  a  number 
of  far  more  complex  processes.  The  boy's  account 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         289 

would  be  of  course  the  simplest,  and  would  certainly 
go  more  home  to  the  general  heart  of  boyhood  ;  but 
it  would  not  for  that  reason  be  the  correctest  or  the 
most  important.  And  just  like  this  will  be  the  case 
of  the  divine  communion,  which  the  simple  saint  may 
feel,  and  the  subtle  theologian  analyse. 

But  it  will  be  well  to  observe,  further,  that  the 
simplicity  of  a  religion  can  of  itself  be  no  test  of  the 
probable  truth  of  it.  And  in  the  case  of  natural  re- 
ligion, what  is  called  simplicity  is  in  general  nothing 
more  than  vagueness.  If  simplicity  used  in  this 
way  be  a  term  of  praise,  we  might  praise  a  landscape 
as  simple  because  it  was  half-drowned  in  mist.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  religion  of  the  Catho- 
lic Church,  putting  out  of  the  question  its  theology, 
is  a  thing  far  simpler  than  the  outside  world  sup- 
poses ;  nor  is  there  a  doctrine  in  it  without  a  direct 
moral  meaning  for  us,  and  not  tending  to  have  a 
direct  effect  on  the  character. 

But  the  outside  world  misjudges  of  all  this  for  va- 
rious reasons.  In  the  first  place,  it  can  reach  it  as  a 
rule  through  explanations  only  ;  and  the  explanation 
or  the  account  of  anything  is  always  far  more  intri- 
cate than  the  apprehension  of  the  thing  itself.  Take, 
for  instance,  the  practice  of  the  invocation  of  saints. 
This  seems  to  many  to  complicate  the  whole  relation 
of  the  soul  to  God,  to  be  introducing  a  number  of 
new  and  unnecessary  go-betweens,  and  to  make  us, 
19 


290  IS  LIFE   WORTH  LIVING? 

as  it  were,  communicate  with  God  through  a  drago- 
man. But  the  case  really  is  very  different.  Of 
course  it  may  be  contended  that  intercessory  prayer, 
or  that  prayer  of  any  kind,  is  an  absurdity  ;  but  for 
those  who  do  not  think  this,  there  can  be  nothing  to 
object  to  in  the  invocation  of  saints.  It  is  admitted 
by  cuch  men  that  we  are  not  wrong  in  asking  the 
living  to  pray  for  us.  Surely,  therefore,  it  is  not 
wrong  to  make  a  like  request  of  the  dead.  In  the 
same  way,  to  those  who  believe  in  purgatory,  to 
pray  for  the  dead  is  as  natural  and  as  rational  as  to 
pray  for  the  living.  Next,  as  to  this  doctrine  of 
purgatory  itself — which  has  so  long  been  a  stum- 
bling-block to  the  whole  Protestant  world — time  goes 
on,  and  the  view  men  take  of  it  is  changing.  It  is 
becoming  fast  recognized  on  all  sides  that  it  is  the 
only  doctrine  that  can  bring  a  belief  in  future  re- 
wards and  punishments  into  anything  like  accord- 
ance with  our  notions  of  what  is  just  or  reasonable. 
So  far  from  its  being  a  superfluous  superstition,  it  is 
seen  to  be  just  what  is  demanded  at  once  by  reason 
and  morality  ;  and  a  belief  in  it  to  be  not  an  intel- 
lectual assent  only,  but  a  partial  harmonising  of  the 
whole  moral  ideal.  And  the  whole  Catholic  religion, 
if  we  only  distinguish  and  apprehend  it  rightly,  will 
present  itself  to  us  in  the  same  light. 

But  there  are  other  reasons  besides  those  just  de- 
scribed, by  which  outsiders  are  hindered  from  ar- 


THE  HUH  AN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         291 

riving  at  such  a  right  view  of  the  matter.  Not  only 
does  the  intricacy  of  Catholicism  described,  blind 
them  to  the  simplicity  of  Catholicism  experienced, 
but  they  confuse  with  the  points  of  faith,  not  only 
the  scientific  accounts  the  theologians  give  of  them, 
but  mere  rules  of  discipline,  and  pious  opinions  also. 
It  is  supposed  popularly,  for  instance,  to  be  of 
Catholic  faith  that  celibacy  is  essential  to  the  priest- 
hood. This  as  a  fact,  however,  is  no  more  a  part  of 
the  Catholic  faith  than  the  celibacy  of  a  college  fel- 
low is  a  part  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  or  than  the 
skill  of  an  English  naval  officer  depends  on  his  not 
having  his  wife  with  him  on  shipboard.  NOT  again, 
to  take  another  popular  instance,  is  the  headship 
of  the  Catholic  Church  connected  essentially  with 
Rome,  any  more  than  the  English  Parliament  is  es- 
sentially connected  with  Westminster. 

The  difficulty  of  distinguishing  things  that  are  of 
faith,  from  mere  pious  opinions,  is  a  more  subtle 
one.  From  the  confusion  caused  by  it,  the  Church 
seems  pledged  to  all  sorts  of  grotesque  stories  of 
saints,  and  accounts  of  the  place  and  aspect  of  heav- 
en, of  hell  and  purgatory,  and  to  be  logically  bound 
to  stand  and  fall  by  these.  Thus  Sir  James  Stephen 
happened  once  in  the  course  of  his  reading  to  light 
on  an  opinion  of  Bellarmine's,  and  certain  arguments 
by  which  he  supported  it,  as  to  the  place  of  purga- 
tory. It  is  quite  true  that  to  us  Bellarmine's  opinion 


292  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

seems  sufficiently  ludicrous  ;  and  Sir  James  Stephen 
argued  that  the  Roman  Church  is  ludicrous  in  just 
the  same  degree.  But  if  he  had  studied  the  matter 
a  little  deeper,  he  would  soon  have  dropped  his  argu- 
ment. He  would  have  seen  that  he  was  attacking, 
not  the  doctrine  of  the  Church,  but  simply  an  opinion, 
not  indeed  condemned  by  her,  but  held  avowedly 
without  her  sanction.  Had  he  studied  Bellarmine 
to  a  little  more  purpose,  he  would  have  seen  that 
that  writer  expressly  states  it  to  be  'a  question  where 
purgatory  is,  but  that  the  Church  7ias  defined  noth- 
ing on  this  point?  He  would  also  have  learned  from 
the  same  source  that  it  is  no  article  of  Catholic  faith, 
though  it  was  of  Bellarmine' s  opinion,  that  there  is 
in  purgatory  any  material  fire  ;  and  that,  las  to  tJie 
intensity  of  the  pains  of  purgatory,  though  all  ad- 
mit that  they  are  greater  than  anything  that  we 
suffer  in  this  life,  still  it  is  doubtful  how  this  is  to 
be  explained  and  understood.'  He  would  have 
learned  too  that,  according  to  Bonaventura,  ''the 
sufferings  of  purgatory  are  only  severer  than  those 
of  this  life,  inasmuch  as  the  greatest  suffering  in 
purgatory  is  more  severe  than  the  greatest  suffering 
endured  in  this  life  ;  though  there  may  be  a  degree 
of  punishment  in  purgatory  less  intense  than  what 
may  sometimes  be  undergone  in  this  world?  And 
finally  he  would  have  learned — what  in  this  connec- 
tion would  have  been  well  worth  his  attention — that 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         293 

the  duration  of  pains  in  purgatory  is  according  to 
Bellarmine,  '  so  completely  uncertain,  that  it  is  rash 
to  pretend  to  determine  anything  about  it.'' 

Here  is  one  instance,  that  will  be  as  good  as  many, 
of  the  way  in  which  the  private  opinions  of  individ- 
ual Catholics,  or  the  transitory  opinions  of  particu- 
lar epochs,  are  taken  for  the  unalterable  teachings 
of  the  Catholic  Church  herself ;  and  it  is  no  more 
logical  to  condemn  the  latter  as  false  because  the 
former  are,  than  it  would  be  to  say  that  all  modern 
geography  is  false  because  geographers  may  still  en- 
tertain false  opinions  about  regions  as  to  which  they 
do  not  profess  certainty.  Mediaeval  doctors  thought 
that  purgatory  might  be  the  middle  of  the  earth. 
Modern  geographers  have  thought  that  there  might 
be  an  open  sea  at  the  North  Pole.  But  that  wrong 
conjectures  have  been  hazarded  in  both  cases,  can 
prove  in  neither  that  there  have  been  no  true  dis- 
coveries. The  Church,  it  is  undeniable,  has  for  a 
long  time  lived  and  moved  amongst  countless  false 
opinions ;  and  to  the  external  eye  they  have  natu- 
rally seemed  a  part  of  her.  But  science  moves  on, 
and  it  is  shown  that  she  can  cast  them  off.  She  has 
cast  off  some  already  ;  soon  doubtless  she  will  cast 
off  others ;  not  in  any  petulant  anger,  but  with  a 
composed  determined  gentleness,  as  some  new  light 
gravely  dawns  upon  her. 

Granting  all  this,  however,  there  remains  a  yet 


294  18  LIFE  WORTII  LIVING  f 

subtler  characteristic  of  the  Church,  which  goes  to 
make  her  a  rock  of  offence  to  many  ;  and  that  is,  the 
temper  and  the  intellectual  tone  which  she  seems  to 
develop  in  her  members.  But  here,  again,  we  must 
call  to  our  aid  considerations  similar  to  those  we 
have  just  been  dwelling  on:  We  must  remember 
that  the  particular  tone  and  temper  that  offends  us 
is  not  necessarily  Catholicism.  The  temper  of  the 
Catholic  world  may  change,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
does  change.  It  is  not  the  same,  indeed,  in  any  two 
countries,  or  in  any  two  eras.  And  it  may  have  a 
new  and  unsuspected  future  in  store  for  it.  It  may 
absorb  ideas  that  we  should  consider  broader,  bolder, 
and  more  rational  than  any  it  seems  to  possess  at 
present.  But  if  ever  it  does  so,  the  Church,  in  the 
opinion  of  Catholics,  will  not  be  growing  false  to 
herself ;  she  will  only,  in  due  time,  be  unfolding  her 
own  spirit  more  fully.  Thus  some  people  associate 
Catholic  conceptions  of  extreme  sanctity  with  a  neg- 
lect of  personal  cleanliness  ;  and  imagine  that  a  clean 
Catholic  can,  according  to  his  own  creed,  never  come 
very  near  perfection.  But  the  Church  has  never 
given  this  view  her  sanction  ;  she  has  never  made 
it  of  faith  that  dirt  is  sacred  ;  she  has  added  no  ninth 
beatitude  in  favour  of  an  unchanged  shirt.  Many  of 
the  greatest  saints  were  doubtless  dirty ;  but  they 
were  dirty  not  because  of  the  Church  they  belonged 
to,  but  because  of  the  age  they  lived  in.  Such  an 


THE  HUMAN  RACE  AND  REVELATION.         395 

expression  of  sanctity  for  themselves,  it  is  probable, 
will  be  loathed  by  the  saints  of  the  future  ;  yet  they 
may  none  the  less  reverence,  for  all  that,  the  saints 
who  so  expressed  it  in  the  past.  This  is  but  a  single 
instance  ;  but  it  may  serve  as  a  type  of  the  wide  cir- 
cle of  changes  that  the  Church  as  a  living  organism, 
still  full  of  vigour  and  power  of  self -adaptation,  will 
be  able  to  develop,  as  the  world  develops  round  her, 
and  yet  lose  nothing  of  her  supernatural  sameness. 

To  sum  up,  then  ;  if  we  would  obtain  a  true  view 
of  the  general  character  of  Catholicism,  we  must  be- 
gin by  making  a  clean  sweep  of  all  the  views  that, 
as  outsiders,  we  have  been  taught  to  entertain  about 
her.  We  must,  in  the  first  place,  learn  to  conceive 
of  her  as  a  living,  spiritual  body,  as  infallible  and  as 
authoritative  now  as  she  ever  was,  with  her  eyes 
undimmed  and  her  strength  not  abated,  continuing 
to  grow  still  as  she  has  continued  to  grow  hitherto : 
and  the  growth  of  the  new  dogmas  that  she  may 
from  time  to  time  enunciate,  we  must  learn  to  see 
are,  from  her  own  stand-point,  signs  of  life  and  not 
signs  of  corruption.  And  further,  when  we  come  to 
look  into  her  more  closely,  we  must  separate  care- 
fully the  diverse  elements  we  find  in  her — her  disci- 
pline, her  pious  opinions,  her  theology,  and  her  re- 
ligion. 

Let  honest  enquirers  do  this  to  the  best  of  their 
power,  and  their  views  will  undergo  an  unlooked-for 


296  18  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

change.  Other  difficulties  of  a  more  circumstantial 
kind,  it  is  true,  still  remain  for  them  ;  and  of  these 
I  shall  speak  presently.  But  putting  these  for  the 
moment  aside,  and  regarding  the  question  under  its 
widest  aspects  only — regarding  it  only  in  connection 
with  the  larger  generalisations  of  science,  and  the 
primary  postulates  of  man's  spiritual  existence — the 
theist  will  find  in  Catholicism  no  new  difficulties. 
He  will  find  in  it  the  logical  development  of  our 
natural  moral  sense,  developed,  indeed,  and  still 
developing,  under  a  special  and  supernatural  care- 
but  essentially  the  same  thing  ;  with  the  same  nega- 
tions, the  same  assertions,  the  same  positive  truths, 
and  the  same  impenetrable  mysteries  ;  and  with 
nothing  new  added  to  them,  but  help,  and  certainty, 
and  guidance. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

UNIVERSAL   HISTORY  AND  THE   CLAIMS   OF  THE 
CHRISTIAN   CHURCH. 

Oh  tlie  little  more,  and  7ioic  much  it  is, 

And  tiie  little  less,  and  what  tcorlds  away  ! — ROBERT  BROWNING. 

AND  now  we  come  to  the  last  objections  left  us,  of 
those  which  modem  thought  has  arrayed  against 
the  Christian  Revelation  ;  and  these  to  many  minds 
are  the  most  conclusive  and  overwhelming  of  all— 
the  objections  raised  against  it  by  a  critical  study  of 
history.  Hitherto  we  have  been  considering  the 
Church  only  with  reference  to  our  general  sense  of 
the  fitness  and  the  rational  probability  of  things. 
TVe  have  now  to  consider  her  with  reference  to  spe- 
cial facts.  Her  claims  and  her  character,  as  she 
exists  at  present,  may  make  perhaps  appeal  over- 
poweringiy  to  us  ;  but  she  cannot  be  judged  only  by 
these.  For  these  are  closely  bound  up  with  a  long 
earthly  history,  which  the  Church  herself  has  writ- 
ten in  one  way,  binding  herself  to  stand  or  fall  by 
the  truth  of  it ;  and  this  all  the  secular  wisdom  of 
the  world  seems  to  be  re-writing  in  quite  another. 
This  subject  is  so  vast  and  intricate  that  even  to  ap- 

297 


298  Is  LrFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

proach  the  details  of  it  would  require  volumes,  not  a 
single  chapter.  But  room  in  a  chapter  may  be 
found  for  one  thing,  of  prior  importance  to  any 
mass  of  detail ;  and  that  is  a  simple  statement  of 
the  principles — unknown  to,  or  forgotten  by  exter- 
nal critics — by  which  all  this  mass  of  detail  is  to  be 
interpreted. 

Let  us  remember  first,  then,  to  take  a  general 
view  of  the  matter,  that  history  as  cited  in  witness 
against  the  Christian  Revelation,  divides  itself  into 
two  main  branches.  The  one  is  a  critical  examina- 
tion of  Christianity,  taken  by  itself — the  authorship, 
and  the  authenticity  of  its  sacred  books,  and  the 
origin  and  growth  of  its  doctrines.  The  other  is  a 
critical  examination  of  Christianity  as  compared 
with  other  religions.  And  the  result  of  both  these 
lines  of  study  is,  to  those  brought  up  in  the  old 
faith,  to  the  last  degree  startling,  and  in  appearance 
at  least  altogether  disastrous.  Let  us  sum  up  briefly 
the  general  results  of  them ;  and  first  of  these  the 
historical. 

We  shall  begin  naturally  with  the  Bible,  as  giving 
us  the  earliest  historical  point  at  which  Christianity 
is  assailable.  What  then  has  modern  criticism  ac- 
complished on  the  Bible?  The  Biblical  account  of 
the  creation  it  has  shown  to  be,  in  its  literal  sense, 
an  impossible  fable.  To  passages  thought  mystical 
and  prophetic  it  has  assigned  the  homeliest,  and 


HISTORY  AND  CLAIMS  OF  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.    399 

often  retrospective  meanings.  Everywhere  at  its 
touch  what  seemed  supernatural  has  been  human- 
ized, and  the  divinity  that  hedged  the  records  has 
rapidly  abandoned  them.  And  now  looked  at  in 
the  common  daylight  their  whole  aspect  changes  for 
us  ;  and  stories  that  we  once  accepted  with  a  solemn 
reverence  seem  childish,  ridiculous,  grotesque,  and 
not  unfrequently  barbarous.  Or  if  we  are  hardly 
prepared  to  admit  so  much  as  this,  this  much  at 
least  has  been  established  firmly — that  the  Bible,  if 
it  does  not  give  the  lie  itself  to  the  astonishing 
claims  that  have  been  made  for  it,  contains  nothing 
in  itself,  at  any  rate,  that  can  of  itself  be  sufficient 
to  support  them.  This  applies  to  the  New  Testa- 
ment just  as  much  as  to  the  Old  ;  and  the  conse- 
quences here  are  even  more  momentous.  Weighed 
as  mere  human  testimony,  the  value  of  the  Gospels 
becomes  doubtful  or  insignificant.  For  the  miracles 
of  Christ,  and  for  his  superhuman  nature,  they  con- 
tain little  evidence,  that  even  tends  to  be  satisfac- 
tory ;  and  even  his  daily  words  and  actions  it  seems 
probable  may  have  been  inaccurately  reported,  in 
some  cases  perhaps  invented,  and  in  others  supplied 
by  a  deceiving  memory.  When  we  pass  from  the 
Gospels  to  the  Epistles,  a  kindred  sight  presents  it- 
self. We  discern  in  them  the  writings  of  men  not 
inspired  from  above  ;  but,  with  many  disagreements 
amongst  themselves,  struggling  upwards  from  be- 


300  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

low,  influenced  by  a  variety  of  existing  views,  and 
doubtful  which  of  them  to  assimilate.  We  discern 
in  them,  as  we  do  in  other  writers,  the  products  of 
their  age  and  of  their  circumstances.  The  materials 
out  of  which  they  formed  their  doctrines  we  can 
find  in  the  lay  world  around  them.  And  as  we  fol- 
low the  Church's  history  farther,  and  examine  the 
appearance  and  the  growtli  of  her  great  subsequent 
dogmas,  we  can  trace  all  of  them  to  a  natural  and  a 
non-Christian  origin.  We  can  see,  for  instance,  how 
in  part,  at  least,  men  conceived  the  idea  of  the 
Trinity  from  the  teachings  of  Greek  Mysticism  ;  and 
how  the  theory  of  the  Atonement  was  shaped  by 
the  ideas  of  Roman  Jurisprudence.  Everywhere, 
in  fact,  in  the  holy  building  supposed  to  have  come 
down  from  God,  we  detect  fragments  of  older  struc- 
tures, confessedly  of  earthly  workmanship. 

But  the  matter  does  not  end  here.  Historical 
science  not  only  shows  us  Christianity,  with  its 
sacred  history,  in  this  new  light ;  but  it  sets  other 
religions  by  the  side  of  it,  and  shows  us  that  their 
course  through  the  world  has  been  strangely  similar. 
They  too  have  had  their  sacred  books,  and  their 
incarnate  Gods  for  prophets ;  they  have  had  their 
priesthoods,  their  traditions,  and  their  growing 
bodies  of  doctrine :  there  is  nothing  in  Christianity 
that  cannot  find  its  counterpart,  even  to  the  most 
marked  details,  in  the  life  of  its .  founder.  Two 


HISTORY  AND  CLAIMS  OF  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.    301 

centuries,  for  instance,  before  the  birth  of  Christ, 
Buddha  is  said  to  have  been  born  without  human 
father.  Angels  sang  in  heaven  to  announce  his  ad- 
vent ;  an  aged  hermit  blessed  him  in  his  mother's 
arms ;  a  monarch  was  advised,  though  he  refused, 
to  destroy  the  child,  who,  it  was  predicted,  should 
be  a  universal  ruler.  It  is  told  how  he  was  once  lost, 
and  was  found  again  in  a  temple  ;  and  how  his  young 
wisdom  astonished  all  the  doctors.  A  woman  in  a 
crowd  was  rebuked  by  him  for  exclaiming,  '  Blessed 
is  tlie  icomb  that  bare  theeS  His  prophetic  career 
began  when  he  was  about  thirty  years  old  ;  and  one 
of  the  most  solemn  events  of  it  is  his  temptation 
in  solitude  by  the  evil  one.  Everywhere,  indeed,  in 
other  religions  we  are  discovering  things  that  we  once 
thought  peculiar  to  the  Christian.  And  thus  the 
fatal  inference  is  being  drawn  on  all  sides,  that  they 
have  all  sprung  from  a  common  and  an  earthly  root, 
and  that  one  has  no  more  certainty  than  another. 
And  thus  another  blow  is  dealt  to  a  faith  that  was 
already  weakened.  Not  only,  it  is  thought,  can 
Christianity  not  prove  itself  in  any  supernatural 
sense  to  be  sacred,  but  other  religions  prove  that 
even  in  a  natural  sense  it  is  not  singular.  It  has  not 
come  down  from  heaven  :  it  is  not  exceptional  even 
in  its  attempt  to  rise  to  it. 

Such  are  the  broad  conclusions  which  in  these  days 
seem  to  be  forced  upon  us  ;  and  which  knowledge, 


302  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVINOf 

as  it  daily  widens,  would  seem  to  be  daily  strength- 
ening. But  are  these  altogether  so  destructive  as  they 
seem  ?  Let  us  enquire  into  this  more  closely.  If  we 
do  this,  it  will  be  soon  apparent  that  the  so-called 
enlightened  and  critical  modern  judgment  has  been 
misled  as  to  this  point  by  an  error  I  have  already 
dwelt  upon.  It  has  considered  Christianity  solely 
as  represented  by  Protestantism ;  or  if  it  has  glanced 
at  Rome  at  all,  it  has  ignorantly  dismissed  as  weak- 
nesses the  doctrines  which  are  the  essence  of  her 
strength.  Now,  as  far  as  Protestantism  is  concerned, 
the  modern  critical  judgment  is  undoubtedly  in  the 
right.  Not  only,  as  I  have  pointed  out  already,  has 
experience  proved  the  practical  incoherency  of  its 
superstructure,  but  criticism  has  washed  away  like 
sand  every  vestige  of  its  supernatural  foundation. 
If  Christianity  relies  solely,  in  proof  of  its  revealed 
message  to  us,  on  the  external  evidences  as  to  its 
history  and  the  source  of  its  doctrines,  it  can  never 
again  hope  to  convince  men.  The  supports  of  ex- 
ternal evidence  are  quite  inadequate  to  the  weight 
that  is  put  upon  them.  They  might  possibly  serve 
as  props ;  but  they  crush  and  crumble  instantly, 
when  they  are  used  as  pillars.  And  as  pillars  it  is 
that  Protestantism  is  compelled  to  use  them.  It  will 
be  quite  sufficient,  here,  to  confine  our  attention  to 
the  Bible,  and  the  place  which  it  occupies  in  the 
structure  of  the  Protestant  fabric.  '  There — in  that 


HISTORY  AND  CLAIMS  OF  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.    303 

bookj  says  Protestantism,  '  is  the  Word  of  God ; 
there  is  my  unerring  guide ;  I  listen  to  none  but 
that.  All  special  Churches  have  varied,  and  have 
therefore  erred;  but  it  is  my  first  axiom  that  that 
book  Jizs  never  erred.  On  that  book,  and  on  that 
book  only,  do  I  rest  myself ;  and  out  of  its  mouth 
shall  you  judge  meS  And  for  a  long  time  this  lan- 
guage had  much  force  in  it ;  for  the  Protestant  axiom 
was  received  by  all  parties.  It  is  true,  indeed,  as  we 
have  seen  already,  that  in  the  absence  of  an  authorita- 
tive interpreter,  an  ambiguous  testament  would  itself 
have  little  authority.  But  it  took  a  long  time  for 
men  to  perceive  this ;  and  all  admitted  meanwhile 
that  the  testament  was  there,  and  it  at  any  rate 
meant  something.  But  now  all  this  is  changed.  The 
great  Protestant  axiom  is  received  by  the  world  no 
longer.  To  many  it  seems  not  an  axiom,  but  an  ab- 
surdity ;  at  best  it  appears  but  as  a  very  doubtful 
fact :  and  if  external  proof  is  to  be  the  thing  that 
guides  us,  we  shall  need  more  proof  to  convince  us 
that  the  Bible  is  the  Word  of  God,  than  that  Protes- 
tantism is  the  religion  of  the  Bible. 

We  need  not  pursue  the  enquiry  further,  nor  ask 
how  Protestantism  will  fare  at  the  hands  of  Com- 
parative Mythology.  The  blow  dealt  by  Biblical 
criticism  is  to  all  appearances  mortal,  and  there  is 
no  need  to  look  about  for  a  second.  But  let  us  turn 
to  Catholicism,  and  we  shall  see  that  the  whole  case 


304  IS  LIFE   WORTH  LIVING? 

is  different.  To  its  past  history,  to  external  evi- 
dence, and  to  the  religions  outside  itself,  Protestant 
Christianity  bears  one  relation,  and  Roman  Chris- 
tianity quite  another. 

Protestantism  offers  itself  to  the  world  as  a  strange 
servant  might,  bringing  with  it  a  number  of  written 
testimonials.  It  asks  us  to  examine  them,  and  by 
them  to  judge  of  its  merits.  It  expressly  begs  us 
not  to  trust  to  its  own  word.  1 1  cannot,'  it  says, 
'  rely  upon  my  memory.  It  lias  failed  me  often  ;  it 
may  fail  me  again.  But  look  at  these  testimonials 
in  my  favour,  and  judge  me  only  by  them."1  And 
the  world  looks  at  them,  examines  them  carefully  ;  it 
at  last  sees  that  they  look  suspicious,  and  that  they 
may,  very  possibly,  be  forgeries.  It  ask  the  Protest- 
ant Church  to  prove  them  genuine  ;  and  the  Protest- 
ant Church  cannot. 

But  the  Catholic  Church  comes  to  us  in  an  exactly 
opposite  way.  She  too  brings  with  her  the  very 
same  testimonials ;  but  she  knows  the  uncertainty 
that  obscures  all  remote  evidences,  and  so  at  first  she 
does  not  lay  much  stress  upon  them.  First  she  asks 
us  to  make  some  acquaintance  with  herself ;  to  look 
into  her  living  eyes,  to  hear  the  words  of  her  mouth, 
to  watch  her  ways  and  works,  and  to  feel  her  inner 
spirit ;  and  then  she  says  to  us,  '  Can  you  trust  me? 
If  you  can,  you  must  trust  me  all  in  all ;  for  the 
very  first  thing  I  declare  to  you  is,  I  ham  never  lied. 


HISTORY  AND  CLAIMS  OF  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.    305 

Can  you  trust  me  thus  far  ?  Then  listen,  and  I  will 
tell  you  my  history.  You  have  heard  it  told  one  way, 
I  know;  and  that  way  of  ten  goes  against  me.  My 
career,  I  admit  it  myself,  has  many  suspicious  cir- 
cumstances. But  none  of  them  positively  condemn 
me:  all  are  capable  of  a  guiltless  interpretation. 
And  when  you  know  me,  as  I  am,  you  will  give  me 
the  benefit  of  every  doubt. ,'  It  is  thus  that  the  Catho- 
lic Church  presents  the  Bible  to  us.  '  Believe  the 
Bible,  for  my  sake,''  she  says;  '•not  me  for  the 
Bible's.'  And  the  book,  as  thus  offered  us,  changes 
its  whole  character.  We  have  not  the  formal  testi- 
monials of  a  stranger ;  we  have  instead  the  memo- 
randa of  a  friend.  We  have  now  that  presumption 
in  their  favour  that  in  the  former  case  was  wanting 
altogether  ;  and  all  that  we  ask  of  the  records  now 
is,  not  that  they  contain  any  inherent  evidence  of 
their  truth,  but  that  they  contain  no  inherent  evi- 
dence of  their  falsehood. 

Farther,  there  is  this  point  to  remember.  Cath- 
olic and  Protestant  alike  declare  the  Bible  to  be  in- 
spired. But  the  Catholics  can  attach  to  inspiration 
a  far  wider,  and  less  assailable  meaning :  for  their 
Church  claims  for  herself  a  perpetual  living  power, 
which  can  always  concentrate  the  inspired  element, 
be  it  never  so  diffused  ;  whereas  for  the  Protestants, 
unless  that  element  be  closely  bound  up  with  the 
letter,  it  at  once  becomes  intangible  and  eludes  them 
20 


306  IS  LIFE  WORTH  L 

altogether.  And  thus,  whilst  the  latter  have  com- 
mitted themselves  to  definite  statements,  now  proved 
untenable,  as  to  what  inspiration  is,  the  Catholic 
Church,  strangely  enough,  has  never  done  anything 
of  the  kind.  She  has  declared  nothing  on  the  sub- 
ject that  is  to  be  held  of  faith.  The  whole  ^  question 
is  still,  within  limits,  an  open  one.  As  the  Catholic 
Church,  then,  stands  at  present,  it  seems  hard  to  say 
that,  were  we  for  other  reasons  inclined  to  trust  her, 
she  makes  any  claims,  on  behalf  of  her  sacred  books, 
which,  in  the  face  of  impartial  history,  would  pre- 
vent our  doing  so. 

Let  us  now  go  farther,  and  consider  those  great 
Christian  doctrines  which,  though  it  is  claimed  that 
they  are  all  implied  in  the  Bible,  are  confessedly 
not  expressed  in  it,  and  were  confessedly  not  con- 
sciously assented  to  by  the  Church,  till  long  after 
the  Christian  Canon  was  closed.  And  here  let  us 
grant  the  modern  critics  their  most  hostile  and  ex- 
treme position.  Let  us  grant  that  all  the  doctrines 
in  question  can  be  traced  to  external,  and  often  to 
non-Christian  sources.  And  what  is  the  result  on 
Romanism  ?  Does  this  logically  go  any  way  what- 
ever towards  discrediting  its  claims  ?  Let  us  con- 
sider the  matter  fairly,  and  we  shall  see  that  it  has 
not  even  a  tendency  to  do  so.  Here,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  Bible,  the  Church's  doctrine  of  her  infallibil- 
ity meets  all  objections.  For  the  real  question  here 


HISTORY  AND  CLAIMS  OF  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.    307 

is,  not  in  what  storehouse  of  opinions  the  Church 
found  her  doctrines,  but  why  she  selected  those  she 
did,  arid  why  she  rejected  and  condemned  the  rest. 
History  and  scientific  criticism  cannot  answer  this. 
History  can  show  us  only  who  baked  the  separate 
bricks  ;  it  cannot  show  us  who  made  or  designed  the 
building.  No  one  believes  that  the  devil  made  the 
plans  of  Cologne  Cathedral ;  but  were  we  inclined  to 
think  he  did,  the  story  would  be  disproved  in  no 
way  by  our  discovering  from  what  quarries  every 
stone  had  been  taken.  And  the  doctrines  of  the 
Church  are  but  as  the  stones  in  a  building,  the  let- 
ters of  an  alphabet,  or  the  words  of  a  language. 
Many  are  offered  and  few  chosen.  The  supernat- 
ural action  is  to  be  detected  in  the  choice.  The 
whole  history  of  the  Church,  in  fact,  as  she  herself 
tells  it,  may  be  described  as  a  history  of  supernat- 
ural selection.  It  is  quite  possible  that  she  may 
claim  it  to  be  more  than  that ;  but  could  she  vindi- 
cate for  herself  but  this  one  faculty  of  an  infallible 
choice,  she  would  vindicate  to  the  full  her  claim  to 
be  under  a  superhuman  guidance. 

The  Church  may  be  conceived  of  as  a  living  organ- 
ism, for  ever  and  on  all  sides  putting  forth  feelers 
and  tentacles,  that  seize,  try,  and  seem  to  dally  with 
all  kinds  of  nutriment.  A  part  of  this  she  at  length 
takes  into  herself.  A  large  part  she  at  length  puts 
down  again.  Much  that  is  thus  rejected  she  seems 


IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

for  a  long  time  on  the  point  of  choosing.  But  how- 
ever slow  may  be  the  final  decision  in  coming,  how- 
ever reluctant  or  hesitating  it  may  seem  to  be,  when 
it  is  once  made,  it  is  claimed  for  it  that  it  is  infallible. 
And  this  claim  is  one,  as  we  shall  see  when  we  under- 
stand its  nature,  that  no  study  of  ecclesiastical  history, 
no  study  of  comparative  mythology  can  invalidate 
now,  or  even  promise  to  invalidate.  There  is  nothing 
rash  in  saying  this.  The  Church  knows  the  difficul- 
ties that  her  past  records  present  to  us,  especially 
that  of  the  divine  character  of  the  Bible.  But  she 
knows  too  that  this  divinity  is  at  present  protected 
by  its  vagueness  ;  nor  is  she  likely  to  expose  it  more 
openly  to  its  enemies,  till  some  sure  plan  of  defence 
has  been  devised  for  it.  Rigid  as  were  the  opinions 
entertained  as  to  Biblical  inspiration,  throughout  the 
greater  part  of  the  Church's  history,  the  Church  has 
never  formally  assumed  them  as  articles  of  faith. 
Had  she  done  so,  she  might  indeed  have  been  con- 
victed of  error,  for  many  of  these  opinions  can  be 
shown  to  be  at  variance  with  fact.  But  though  she 
lived  and  breathed  for  so  many  centuries  amongst 
them,  though  for  ages  none  of  her  members  perhaps 
ever  doubted  their  truth,  she  has  not  laid  them  on 
succeeding  ages  :  she  has  left  them  opinions  still. 
A  Catholic  might  well  adduce  this  as  an  instance, 
not  indeed  of  her  supernatural  selection,  but  of  its 
counterpart,  her  supernatural  rejection. 


HISTORY  AND  CLAIMS  OF  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.    309 

And  now,  to  turn  from  the  past  to  the  future,  her 
possible  future  conduct  in  this  matter  will  give  us  a 
very  vivid  illustration  of  her  whole  past  procedure. 
It  may  be  that  before  the  Church  defines  inspiration 
exactly  (if  she  ever  does  so),  she  will  wait  till  lay 
criticism  has  done  all  it  can  de.  She  may  then  con- 
sider what  views  of  the  Bible  are  historically  tenable, 
and  what  not ;  and  may  faithfully  shape  her  teach- 
ing by  the  learning  of  this  world,  though  it  may 
have  been  gathered  together  for  the  express  purpose 
of  overthrowing  her.  Atheistic  scholars  may  be 
quoted  in  her  councils  ;  and  supercilious  and  scepti- 
cal philologists,  could  they  live  another  hundred 
years,  might  perhaps  recognise  their  discoveries, 
even  their  words  and  phrases,  embodied  in  an  ecclesi- 
astical definition.  To  the  outer  world  such  a  defini- 
tion would  seem  to  be  a  mere  natural  production. 
But  in  the  eyes  of  a  Catholic  it  would  be  as  truly 
supernatural,  as  truly  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
as  if  it  had  come  down  ready-made  out  of  heaven, 
with  all  the  accompaniments  of  a  rushing  mighty 
wind,  and  of  visible  tongues  of  flame.  Sanguine 
critics  might  expose  the  inmost  history  of  the  council 
in  which  the  definition  was  made  ;  they  might  show 
the  whole  conduct  of  it,  from  one  side,  to  be  but  a 
meshwork  of  accident  and  of  human  motives ;  and 
they  would  ask  triumphantly  for  any  traces  of  the 
action  of  the  divine  spirit.  But  the  Church  would 


310  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

be  unabashed.  She  would  answer  in  the  words  of 
Job,  '  Behold  I  go  forward,  but  He  is  not  there  / 
and  backward,  but  I  cannot  perceive  Him  ;  but  He 
Jcnoweth  the  way  that  I  take ;  when  He  hath  tried 
me,  I.  shall  come  forth  as  gold.  Behold  my  witness 
is  in  heaven,  and  my  ^champion  is  on  high.'' 

And  thus  the  doctrine  of  the  Church's  infallibility 
has  a  side  that  is  just  the  opposite  of  that  which  is 
commonly  thought  to  be  its  only  one.  It  is  sup- 
posed to  have  simply  gendered  bondage ;  not  to 
have  gendered  liberty.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  it 
has  done  both  ;  and  if  we  view  the  matter  fairly,  we 
shall  see  that  it  has  done  the  latter  at  least  as  com- 
pletely as  the  former.  The  doctrine  of  infallibility 
is  undoubtedly  a  rope  that  tethers  those  that  hold  it 
to  certain  real  or  supposed  facts  of  the  past ;  but  it 
is  a  rope  that  is  capable  of  indefinite  lengthening.  It 
is  not  a  fetter  only  ;  it  is  a  Support  also  ;  and  those 
who  cling  to  it  can  venture  fearlessly,  as  explorers, 
into  currents  of  speculation  that  would  sweep  away 
altogether  men  who  did  but  trust  to  their  own  pow- 
ers of  swimming.  Nor  does,  as  is  often  supposed, 
the  centralizing  of  this  infallibility  in  the  person  of 
one  man  present  any  difficulty  from  the  Catholic 
point  of  view.  It  is  said  that  the  Pope  might  any 
day  make  a  dogma  of  any  absurdities  that  might 
happen  to  occur  to  him  ;  and  that  the  Catholic  would 
be  bound  to  accept  these,  however  strongly  his  rea- 


HISTORY  AND  CLAIMS  OF  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.    3H 

son  might  repudiate  them.  And  it  is  quite  true  that 
the  Pope  might  do  this  any  day,  in  the  sense  that 
there  is  no  external  power  to  prevent  him.  But  he 
who  has  assented  to  the  central  doctrine  of  Catholi- 
cism knows  that  he  never  will.  And  it  is  precisely 
the  obvious  absence  of  any  restraint ,  from  without 
that  brings  home  to  the  Catholic  his  faith  in  the 
guiding  power  from  within. 

Such,  then,  and  so  compacted  is  the  Church  of 
Rome,  as  a  visible  and  earthly  body,  with  a  past 
and  future  history.  And  with  so  singular  a  firm- 
ness and  flexibility  is  her  frame  knit  together,  that 
none  of  her  modern  enemies  can  get  any  lasting  hold 
on  her,  or  dismember  her  or  dislocate  her  limbs  on 
the  racks  of  their  criticism. 

But  granting  all  this,  what  does  this  do  for  her  ? 
Does  it  do  more  than  present  her  to  us  as  the 
toughest  and  most  fortunate  religion,  out  of  many 
co-ordinate  and  competing  ones  ?  Does  it  tend  in 
any  way  to  set  her  on  a  different  platform  from  the 
others  ?  And  the  answer  to  this  is,  that,  so  far  as 
exact  proof  goes,  we  have  nothing  to  expect  or  deal 
with  in  the  matter,  either  one  way  or  the  other. 
The  evidences  at  our  disposal  will  impart  a  general 
tendency  to  our  opinions,  but  no  more  than  that. 
The  general  tendency  here,  however,  is  the  very  re- 
verse of  what  it  is  vulgarly  supposed  to  be.  So  far 
from  the  similarities  to  her  in  other  religions  telling 


312  18  LIFE   WORTH  LIVING  f 

against  the  special  claims  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
they  must  really,  with  the  candid  theist,  tell  very 
strongly  in  her  favour.  For  the  theist,  all  theisms 
have  a  profound  element  of  truth  in  them  ;  and  all 
alleged  revelations  will,  in  his  eyes,  be  natural  the- 
isms, struggling  to  embody  themselves  in  some  au- 
thorised and  authoritative  form.  The  Catholic 
Church,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a  human  organism,  ca- 
pable of  receiving  the  Divine  Spirit ;  and  this  is 
what  all  other  religious  bodies,  in  so  far  as  they 
have  claimed  authority  for  their  teaching,  have  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  attempted  to  be  likewise  ; 
only  the  Catholic  Church  represents  success,  where 
the  others  represent  failure  :  and  thus  these,  from 
the  Catholic  stand-point,  are  abortive  and  incom- 
plete Catholicisms.  The  Bethesda  of  human  faith 
is  world- wide  and  as  old  as  time  ;  only  in  one  par- 
ticular spot  an  angel  has  come  down  and  troubled 
it ;  and  the  waters  have  been  circling  there,  thence- 
forth, in  a  healing  vortex.  Such  is  the  sort  of  claim 
that  the  Catholic  Church  makes  for  herself  ;  and,  if 
this  be  so,  what  she  is,  does  not  belie  what  she 
claims  to  be.  Indeed,  the  more  we  compare  her  with 
the  other  religions,  her  rivals,  the  more,  even  where 
she  most  resembles  them,  shall  we  see  in  her  a  some- 
thing that  marks  her  off  from  them.  The  others  are 
like  vague  and  vain  attempts  at  a  forgotten  tune ; 
she  is  like  the  tune  itself,  which  is  recognised  the 


HISTORY  AND  CLAIMS  OF  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.    313 

instant  it  is  heard,  and  which  has  been  so  near  to  us 
all  the  time,  though  so  immeasurably  far  away  from 
us.  The  Catholi:'  Church  is  the  only  dogmatic  relig- 
ion that  has  seen  what  dogmatism  really  implies, 
and  what  will,  in  the  long  run,  be  demanded  of  it, 
and  she  contains  in  herself  all  appliances  for  meet- 
ing these  demands.  She  alone  has  seen  that  if  there 
is  to  be  an  infallible  voice  in  the  world,  this  voice 
must  be  a  living  one,  as  capable  of  speaking  now  as 
it  ever  was  in  the  past ;  and  that  as  the  world's  ca- 
pacities for  knowledge  grow,  the  teacher  must  be 
always  able  to  unfold  to  it  a  fuller  teaching.  The 
Catholic  Church  is  the  only  historical  religion  that 
can  conceivably  thus  adapt  itself  to  the  wants  of  the 
present  day,  without  virtually  ceasing  to  be  itself. 
It  is  the  only  religion  that  can  keep  its  identity 
without  losing  its  life,  and  keep  its  life  without 
losing  its  identity  ;  that  can  enlarge  its  teachings 
without  changing  them  ;  that  can  be  always  the 
same,  and  yet  be  always  developing. 

All  this,  of  course,  does  not  prove  that  Catholicism 
is  the  truth  ;  but  it  will  show  the  theist  that,  for 
all  that  the  modern  world  can  tell  him,  it  may  be. 
And  thus  much  at  least  will  by-and-by  come  to  be 
recognised  generally.  Opinion,  that  has  been  clari- 
fied on  so  many  subjects,  cannot  remain  forever  tur- 
bid here.  A  change  must  come,  and  a  change  can 
only  be  for  the  better.  At  present  the  so-called 


314  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

leaders  of  enlightened  and  liberal  thought  are  in 
this  matter,  so  far  as  fairness  and  insight  go,  on  a 
level  with  the  wives  and  mothers  of  our  small  pro- 
vincial shopkeepers,  or  the  beadle  or  churchwarden 
of  a  country  parish.  But  prejudice,  even  when  so 
virulent  and  so  dogged  as  this,  will  lift  and  dis- 
appear some  day  like  a  London  fog ;  and  then  the 
lineaments  of  the  question  will  confront  us  clearly 
— the  question  :  but  who  shall  decide  the  answer  ? 
What  I  have  left  to  say  bears  solely  upon  this. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

BELIEF   AND    WILL. 

'  Abraham  believed  God,  and  it  was  counted  to  Mm  for 

ARGUMENTS  are  like  the  seed,  or  like  the  soul,  as 
Paul  conceived  of  it,  which  he  compared  to  seed. 
They  are  not  quickened  unless  they  die.  As  long 
as  they  remain  for  us  in  the  form  of  arguments  they 
do  no  work.  Their  work  begins  only,  after  a  time 
and  in  secret,  when  they  have  sunk  down  into  the 
memory,  and  have  been  left  to  lie  there ;  when  the 
hostility  and  distrust  they  were  regarded  with  dies 
away ;  when,  unperceived,  they  melt  into  the  mental 
system,  and,  becoming  part  of  oneself,  effect  a  turn- 
ing round  of  the  soul.  This  is  true,  at  least,  when 
the  matters  dealt  with  are  such  as  have  engaged  us 
here.  It  may  be  true,  too,  of  those  who  discern  and 
urge  the  arguments,  just  as  well  as  of  those  upon 
whom  they  urge  them.  But  the  immediate  barren- 
ness of  much  patient  and  careful  reasoning  should 
not  make  us  think  that  it  is  lost  labour.  One  way 
or  other  it  will  some  day  bear  its  fruit.  Sometimes 
the  intellect  is  the  servant  of  the  heart.  At  other 
times  the  heart  must  follow  slowly  upon  the  heels  of 
the  intellect. 

And  such  is  the  case  now.  For  centuries  man's 

315 


316  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING! 

faith  and  all  his  loftier  feelings  had  their  way  made 
plain  before  them.  The  whole  empire  of  human 
thought  belonged  to  them.  But  this  old  state  of 
things  endures  no  longer.  Upon  this  Empire,  as  up- 
on that  of  Rome,  calamity  has  at  last  fallen.  A  horde 
of  intellectual  barbarians  has  burst  in  upon  it,  and 
has  occupied  by  force  the  length  and  breadth  of  it. 
The  result  has  been  astounding.  Had  the  invaders 
been  barbarians  only,  they  might  have  been  repelled 
easily  ;  but  they  were  barbarians  armed  with  the 
most  powerful  weapons  of  civilisation.  They  were  a 
phenomenon  new  to  history:  they  showed  us  real 
knowledge  in  the  hands  of  real  ignorance  ;  and  the 
work  of  the  combination  thus  far  has  been  ruin,  not 
reorganisation.  Few  great  movements  at  the  begin- 
ning have  been  conscious  of  their  own  true  tendency  ; 
but  no  great  movement  has  mistaken  it  like  modern 
Positivism.  Seeing  just  too  well  to  have  the  true 
instinct  of  blindness,  and  too  ill  to  have  the  proper 
guidance  from  sight,  it  has  tightened  its  clutch  upon 
the  world  of  thought,  only  to  impart  to  it  its  own 
confusion.  What  lies  before  men  now  is  to  reduce 
this  confusion  to  order,  by  a  patient  and  calm  em- 
ployment of  the  intellect.  Intellect  itself  will  never 
re-kindle  faith,  or  restore  any  of  those  powers  that 
are  at  present  so  failing  and  so  feeble ;  but  it  will 
work  like  a  pioneer  to  prepare  their  way  before  them, 
if  they  are  ever  revived  otherwise,  encouraged  in  its 


BELIEF  AND  WILL.  317 

labours,  perhaps  not  even  by  hope,  but  at  any  rate 
by  the  hope  of  hope. 

As  a  pioneer,  and  not  as  a  preacher,  I  have  tried 
to  indicate  the  real  position  in  which  modern  knowl- 
edge has  placed  us,  and  the  way  in  which  it  puts 
the  problem  of  life  before  us.  I  have  tried  to  show 
that,  whatever  ultimately  its  tendency  may  prove  to 
be,  it  cannot  be  the  tendency  that,  by  the  school 
that  has  given  it  to  us,  it  is  supposed  to  have  been  ; 
and  that  it  either  does  a  great  deal  more  than  that 
school  thinks  it  does,  or  a  great  deal  less.  History 
would  teach  us  this,  even  if  nothing  else  did.  The 
school  in  question  has  proceeded  from  denial  to 
denial,  thinking  at  each  successive  moment  that  it 
had  reached  its  final  halting-place,  and  had  struck 
at  last  on  a  solid  and  firm  foundation.  First,  it  de- 
nied the  Church  to  assert  the  Bible  ;  then  it  denied 
the  Bible  to  assert  God ;  then  it  denied  God  to  as- 
sert the  moral  dignity  of  man :  and  there,  if  it 
could  remain,  it  would.  But  what  it  would  do  is 
of  no  avail.  It  is  not  its  own  master ;  it  is  com- 
pelled to  move  onwards ;  and  now,  under  the  force 
of  its  own  relentless  logic,  this  last  resting-place  is 
beginning  to  fail  also.  It  professed  to  compensate 
for  its  denials  of  God's  existence  by  a  freer  and 
more  convincing  re  assertion  of  man's  dignity.  But 
the  principles  which  obliged  it  to  deny  the  first  be- 
lief are  found  to  be  even  more  fatal  to  the  substi- 


318  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

tute.  '  Unless  I  have  seen  with  my  eyes  I  will  not 
believe,'9  expresses  a  certain  mental  tendency  that 
has  always  had  existence.  But  till  Science  and  its 
positive  methods  began  to  dawn  on  the  world,  this 
tendency  was  vague  and  wavering.  Positive  Science 
supplied  it  with  solid  nutriment.  Its  body  grew 
denser ;  its  shape  more  and  more  definite  ;  and  now 
the  completed  portent  is  spreading  its  denials 
through  the  whole  universe.  So  far  as  spirit  goes 
and  spiritual  aspirations,  it  has  left  existence  empty, 
swept  and  garnished.  If  spirit  is  to  enter  in  again 
and  dwell  there,  we  must  seek  by  other  methods  for 
it.  Modern  thought  has  not  created  a  new  doubt ; 
it  has  simply  made  perfect  an  old  one  ;  and  has  ad- 
vanced it  from  the  distant  regions  of  theory  into  the 
very  middle  of  our  hearts  and  lives.  It  has  made 
the  question  of  belief  or  of  unbelief  the  supreme 
practical  question  for  us.  It  has  forced  us  to  stake 
everything  on  the  cast  of  a  single  die.  What  are 
we  ?  Have  we  been  hitherto  deceived  in  ourselves, 
or  have  we  not  ?  And  is  every  hope  that  has  hith- 
erto nerved  our  lives,  melting  at  last  away  from  us, 
utterly  and  for  ever?  Or  are  we  indeed  what  we 
have  been  taught  to  think  we  are  \  Have  we  indeed 
some  aims  that  we  may  still  call  high  and  holy- 
still  some  aims  that  are  more  than  transitory  ?  And 
have  we  still  some  right  to  that  reverence  that  we 
have  learnt  to  cherish  for  ourselves  ? 


BELIEF  AND  WILL.  319 

Here  lie  the  difficulties.  The  battle  is  to  be  fought 
here — here  at  the  very  threshold — at  the  entrance  to 
the  spiritual  world.  Are  we  moral  and  spiritual 
beings,  or  are  we  not  ?  That  is  the  decisive  question, 
which  we  must  say  our  Yes  or  No  to.  If,  with  our 
eyes  open,  and  with  all  our  hearts,  it  be  given  us  to 
say  Yes — to  say  Yes  without  fear,  and  firmly,  and  in 
the  face  of  everything — then  there  will  be  little  more 
to  fear.  We  shall  have  fought  the  good  fight,  we 
shall  have  kept  the  faith ;  and  whatever  we  lack 
more,  will  without  doubt  be  added  to  us.  From  this 
belief  in  ourselves  we  shall  pass  to  the  belief  in  God, 
as  its  only  rational  basis  and  its  only  emotional  com- 
pletion ;  and,  perhaps,  from  a  belief  in  God,  to  a  rec- 
ognition of  His  audible  voice  amongst  us.  But  at 
any  rate,  whatever  after-difficulties  beset  us,  they 
will  not  be  new  difficulties  ;  only  those  we  had  braved 
at  first,  showing  themselves  more  clearly. 

But  that  first  decision — how  shall  we  make  it? 
Who  or  what  shall  help  us,  or  give  us  counsel? 
There  is  no  evidence  that  can  do  so  in  the  sensible 
world  around  us.  The  universe,  as  positive  thought 
approaches  it,  is  blind  and  dumb  about  it.  Science 
and  history  are  sullen,  and  blind,  and  dumb.  They 
await  upon  our  decision  before  they  will  utter  a 
single  word  to  us :  and  that  decision,  if  we  have  a 
will  at  all,  it  lies  with  our  own  will — with  our  will 
alone,  to  make.  It  may,  indeed,  be  said  that  the 


320  &  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

will  has  to  create  itself  by  an  initial  exercise  of  itself, 
in  an  assent  to  its  own  existence.  If  it  can  do  this, 
one  set  of  obstacles  is  surmounted ;  but  others  yet 
confront  us.  The  world  into  which  the  moral  will 
has  borne  itself — not  a  material  world,  but  a  spiritual 
— a  world  which  the  will's  existence  alone  makes 
possible,  this  world  is  not  silent,  like  the  other,  but 
it  is  torn  and  divided  against  itself,  and  is  resonant 
with  unending  contradictions.  Its  first  aspect  is  that 
of  a  place  of  torture,  a  hell  of  the  intellect,  in  which 
reason  is  to  be  racked  for  ever  by  a  tribe  of  sphinx- 
like  monsters,  themselves  despairing.  Good  and  evil 
inhabit  there,  confronting  each  other,  for  ever  unre- 
conciled :  tliere  is  omnipotent  power  baffled,  and 
omnipotent  mercy  unexercised.  Is  the  will  strong 
enough  to  hold  on  through  this  baffling  and  mon- 
strous world,  and  not  to  shrink  back  and  bid  the 
vision  vanish  ?  Can  we  still  resolve  to  say,  '  I  believe, 
although  it  is  impossible '  ?  Is  the  will  to  assert  our 
own  moral  nature — our  own  birthright  in  eternity, 
strong  enough  to  bear  us  on  ? 

The  trial  is  a  hard  one,  and  whilst  we  doubt  and 
hesitate  under  it  the  universal  silence  of  the  vast 
physical  world  itself  disheartens  us.  Who  are  we, 
in  the  midst  of  this  unheeding  universe,  that  we  can 
claim  for  ourselves  so  supreme  a  heritage ;  that  we 
can  assert  for  ourselves  other  laws  than  those  which 
seem  to  be  all-pervading,  and  that  we  can  dream 


BELIEF  AND  WILL.  321 

of  breaking   through  them  into  a  something  else 
beyond  ? 

And  yet  it  may  be  that  faith  will  succeed  and  con- 
quer sight — that  the  preciousness  of  the  treasure  we 
cling  to  will  nerve  us  with  enough  strength  to  retain 
it.  It  may  be  that  man,  having  seen  the  way  that, 
unaided,  he  is  forced  to  go,  will  change  his  attitude  ; 
that,  finding  only  weakness  in  pride,  he  will  seek 
for  strength  in  humility,  and  will  again  learn  to  say, 
'I believe,  although  I  never  can  comprehend?  Once 
let  him  say  this,  his  path  will  again  grow  clearer 
for  him.  Through  confusion,  and  doubt,  and  dark- 
ness, the  brightness  of  God's  countenance  will  again 
be  visible ;  and  by-and-by  again  he  may  hear  the 
Word  calling  him.  From  his  first  assent  to  his  own 
moral  nature  he  must  rise  to  a  theism,  and  he  may 
rise  to  the  recognition  of  a  Church — to  a  visible  em- 
bodiment of  that  moral  nature  of  his,  as  directed  and 
joined  to  its  one  aim  and  end — to  its  delight,  and  its 
desire,  and  its  completion.  Then  he  will  see  all  that 
is  high  and  holy  taking  a  distinct  and  helping  form 
for  him.  Grace  and  mercy  will  come  to  him  through 
set  and  certain  channels.  His  nature  will  be  re- 
deemed visibly  from  its  weakness  and  from  its  little- 
ness— redeemed,  not  in  dreams  or  in  fancy,  but  in 
fact.  God  Himself  will  be  his  brother  and  his  father ; 
he  will  be  near  akin  to  the  Power  that  is  always,  and 
is  everywhere.  His  love  of  virtue  will  be  no  longer 
21 


322  IS  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  f 

a  mere  taste  of  his  own :  it  will  be  the  discernment 
and  taking  to  himself  of  the  eternal  strength  and  of 
the  eternal  treasure  ;  and,  whatever  he  most  reveres 
in  mother,  or  wife,  or  sister — this  he  will  know  is 
holy,  everywhere  and  for  ever,  and  is  exalted  high 
over  all  things  in  one  of  like  nature  with  theirs,  the 
Mother  of  grace,  the  Parent  of  sweet  clemency,  who 
will  protect  him  from  the  enemy,  and  save  him  in 
the  hour  of  death. 

Such  is  the  conception  of  himself,  and  of  his  place 
in  existence,  that,  always  implicit  in  man,  man  has 
at  last  developed.  He  has  at  last  conceived  his  race 
— the  faithful  of  it — as  the  bride  of  God.  Is  this 
majestic  conception  a  true  one,  or  is  it  a  dream  only, 
with  no  abiding  substance?  Is  it  merely  a  misty 
vision  rising  up  like  an  exhalation  from  the  earth,  or 
does  a  something  more  come  down  to  it  out  of  hea- 
ven, and  strike  into  it  substance  and  reality  I  This 
figure  of  human  dreams  has  grown  and  grown  in 
stature  :  does  anything  divine  descend  to  it,  and  so 
much  as  touch  its  lips  or  its  lifted  hands  ?  If  so,  it 
is  but  the  work  of  a  moment.  The  contact  is  com- 
plete. Life,  and  truth,  and  force,  like  an  electric 
current,  pass  into  the  whole  frame.  It  lives,  it  moves, 
it  breathes :  it  has  a  body  and  a  being :  the  divine 
and  the  eternal  is  indeed  dwelling  amongst  us.  And 
thus,  though  mature  knowledge  may  seem,  as  it  still 
widens,  to  deepen  the  night  around  us  ;  though  the 


BELIEF  AND  WILL.  323  - 

universe  yawn  wider  on  all  sides  of  us,  in  vaster 
depths,  in  more  unfathomable,  soulless  gulfs ;  though 
the  roar  of  the  loom  of  time  grow  more  audible  and 
more  deafening  in  our  ears — yet  through  the  night 
and  through  the  darkness  the  divine  light  of  our 
lives  will  only  burn  the  clearer :  and  this  speck  of  a 
world  as  it  moves  through  the  blank  immensity  will 
bear  the  light  of  all  the  worlds  upon  its  bosom. 

Thinkers  like  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  say  that  such 
beliefs  as  these  belong  to  dream-land  ;  and  they  are 
welcome  if  they  please  to  keep  their  names.  Their 
terminology  at  least  has  this  merit,  that  it  recognises 
the  dualism  of  the  two  orders  of  things  it  deals  with. 
Let  them  keep  their  names  if  they  will ;  and  in  their 
language  the  case  amounts  to  this — that  it  is  only 
for  the  sake  of  the  dreams  that  visit  it  that  the  world 
of  reality  has  any  certain  value  for  us.  Will  not  the 
dreams  continue,  when  the  reality  has  passed  away  ? 


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